When Viri found Ursula, dusk was just settling on the city. He stopped on seeing her, blinked a few times, and then, perceiving whatever evidence it was that caused his confidence to click into place, said a silent prayer to his god.
He waited until she had passed him, counted to six, and then turned to follow her. Backlit now by the red bleed of the sunken sky, she lost her definition, assumed a place in the crowd. That wiggling mass that writhed along State Street, downtown, on a Thursday night. Brisk, curt dashes of commuters hurrying home, as impatient as small children. Bloated bellies hobbling out to see the sites, stones tumbled along by the current. He relished seeing her there amongst them, tracked her through the congestion by her upturned chin, her half-shaved head. He didn’t hesitate when she grabbed the hand of the woman next to her, skipped as gently as a river down the steps of the Red Line. He hurried in after.
Together they rode up to Belmont. They walked through a street festival. Ursula touched the woman next to her with a near compulsive frequency. At a distance — a pinky looped in the other’s, a hand grasping for the elbow’s nook. Twice she plunged in for more — once to hang on the woman’s back and nuzzle her nose against her neck, once to sweep herself under the woman’s arm and into her embrace — but both times before Viri could count to four they had separated again.
They grazed on tacos purchased from a food truck, Viri on a half consumed cob of Mexican corn, neatly placed atop an overflowing waste bin. He followed them until the sun was truly extinguished, until the firmament was one rumbling charcoal smear, and then, to his great delight, he followed them into a bar.
The establishment felt familiar if still well kept, slathered in dark wood paneling, spotted with floor-to-ceiling wood posts, edged with battered wooden booths. It was kidney shaped in layout, or, perhaps more accurately, Viri thought, like an enwombed fetus. They entered through the birth canal and the women positioned themselves somewhere near the chin, along the bar that ran from nose to toes. Viri found a post near the armpit, grabbed two abandoned drinks, mixed them together, and, pinning in place his posture, stood as still as possible. Once his body quieted enough he was able to hear them.
“But that’s not what you said. No, baby, I’m not — I’m not trying to rile shit up. Listen. My girl. I know you don’t want to talk about it but I want to talk about it — for you, and for me, and for us. I’m not trying to like — gotcha! — it’s nothing like that. I just mean . . . it’s not what you said, you know?”
This was from the other woman. One might have called her big boned but this would have been dishonest. Her frame held no sturdiness, carried no weight despite its size, just softness. A gentle softness that wafted up through her dime-sized cheeks, her creamy brown skin, her curlicue smile, which, based on the evidence collected so far, seemed a permanent fixture.
“I guess then I don’t remember what I said.”
This was from Ursula. One might have described her as smiling but that would have been laughable. It was a grimace, held under shifting eyes, as emotions cycled across her face. Eventually she chose one, swept her hair across her face as, gorgeously, the sheen of it caught the light and danced. It held all the vibrance and elegance of her youth. She couldn’t have been past her early twenties, appeared both younger in years and older in experience than the woman across from her. She tossed her chin upward and settled into chosen response.
“So come on, just tell me.”
“Oh you don’t remember?”
“That’s right.”
“Uh huh. Sure.” The curlicue wound tighter.
“Miriam.” Ursula’s hand came across the counter and landed on the other woman’s. It didn’t squeeze it, and Ursula didn’t move any closer. It rested there at a contorted angle, giving the impression of a mauled rodent a cat might have laid at the foot of its owner.
“You said that was the only time, probably, that you’d actually been happy.”
Ursula waited.
The smile unwound. “As in, you aren’t actually happy now. As in, you haven’t ever actually been happy with me. As in, I don’t actually make you happy.”
“Miriam, that’s not what I meant.”
The stiffness beneath the softness revealed itself. It was all in the spine. It shot upward and angled backward, taking on the curve of a scorpion’s tail.
“I mean, I was saying it was the only time I’d been happy about the other stuff in my life.”
Miriam waited. The tail quivered.
“You are — you know this. You are the good thing in my life. I have this one amazing thing in my life, and it’s surrounded by an island of just — shit. And so I meant that that was like, for half a second, the time I felt happy about other things in my life — which was really probably just endorphins or whatever. But I’m always happy about you. It’s just that there’s all the other stuff. The money stuff, my stupid job, my —”
Ursula clipped up her chin again but it wasn’t confidence this time. Like someone holding a mouthful of water they were scared to spill out. Miriam nodded and Ursula swallowed it down.
“But I’m sorry. I don’t want you to ever think that. I — you know how much I love you.”
Her hands were lifted now, as if, perhaps, holding the enormous object of her love before them. During the ensuing pause Viri stiffened to the point of nearly cracking his ear drums, angled his body as far as balance would allow in their direction. With a sigh, the pressure of the scorpion’s tail went lax.
“I know.”
“I mean it, baby, you’re — you’re all I have in this world. You’re everything good there is to me.”
Miriam tilted into the waiting arms. She rested her head on Ursula’s shoulder and her softness pillowed around them both.
Ursula, on the other side, kept her eyes open and her countenance blank. The pleading eyebrows and quivering mouth fell away like a dropped curtain. In their place she pursed her lips and knit her brow, working over the problem. She crept up to the verge of solving it, had just started to chew her inner lip, when her eyes ticked over to the strange man who was staring at her.
Viri.
They both held the connection for longer than, in the moment, either would have chosen to. Then with a start Viri twisted away into his rum and vodka and Ursula straightened up again out of Miriam’s embrace.
Her weepy smile slid back on. She brought Miriam close again, forehead to forehead, gave her a quiet kiss, and then stiffened back upright again, turned abruptly in search of the bartender.
Miriam squeezed Ursula’s hand, gave her her drink order, and, with one last kiss on Ursula’s shoulder, went off in search of the bathroom.
Ursula succeeded in catching the bartender’s attention, placed their order, tapped a few nervous times on the counter, and then, when she could stand it no more, searched over her shoulder for the strange man who’d been staring at her. She found only an empty post.
“You’re not very good at that, I’m sure you know.”
Ursula whisked around to find him on her other side now, squeezed in close between herself and the patron seated next to her. His bald head gleamed loudly amid the dull ambient light. Air husked noisily out of his nose, as if the effort of creeping up on her had taxed him. He pulled a pen from the inside pocket of his battered black peacoat and slipped the napkin from beneath their neighbor’s drink. There, in a circle around the water stain, he began to write.
“I’m sorry?” Ursula asked.
She angled herself backwards, posturing disgust. The opening gave Viri the room he needed to look up and into her eyes again. This time he was ready. He had small black eyes, packed as tight as marbles and pitted deep in the thick flesh of his face. But they fixed themselves on their target with laser-like precision and glimmered with horrifying perspicacity. Ursula found herself unable to turn away until Viri blinked and turned back to his napkin.
“The lying,” he said. “There’s room for improvement, my dear.”
“Do I know you?”
“No more or less than anyone else.”
“Do you often stare at people you don’t know?”
“Yes, you could probably accuse me of that. Especially —” He finished with his napkin, took a breath and stood upright again. He turned the cannon of his gaze back onto Ursula and she flinched as it locked onto her. “— Especially when they bear such a striking resemblance to their father.”
Ursula’s eyes widened until they could no more. Then she froze exactly as she was, her fingertips still grazing the edge of the countertop, her balance titled too far back. The only movement was caused by her rapid-fire breathing, which made her cheeks flutter, and the manic blinking of her gaping eyes.
Viri waited until her breathing slowed, took his eyes off of her to help the process. Then he continued on.
“You may think that you don’t know me but I am certain that I know you — more, perhaps, than you would like to know yourself. I know, for example — and knew before, I should say, you caught me witnessing that little performance — that you are not exactly honest, with yourself or anyone, about who you are or what you want. I know — don’t ask me how, not right now — why that is. Because you fear, by being honest, you will rob yourself of the one thing you want so desperately in this life.”
Viri waited and, when Ursula remained silent, he gave one small nod of encouragement.
“What is that?” she asked, the words coming out too close together.
“To escape your fate.” He was focused on his napkin as he spoke, his head angled kindly. He folded it and unfolded it across various axes. “You’re wrong, of course, we both know that. Your dissembling, your dishonesty will only tie you more tightly to it. I have, ahem, an alternative I’d like to offer. You —” a wide smile rippled across his face, bubbled into a low, gurgling belly laugh, “you won’t like it! I’m sorry about that, but it’s the truth. If I had a better way, I promise . . . Alas, though, we must make the most of what we are given.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Ursula asked in a whisper.
“If you’d like to find out, I’d like to show you.”
He slid the napkin across to her.
He took one step away, his own little performance now concluded. He hesitated then, Ursula still as rattled as a pinball machine. With a sigh he took back his step and placed one hand delicately atop Ursula’s.
“You don’t have to keep living this way. I’m offering you an alternative. I’m offering you — is there another word for it? — your inheritance. You might, if nothing else, hear me out.”
Then, with the smile of a disappointed parent, he retreated again, this time following through with it. Weaving through the wooden posts, hurrying out the birth canal, running with gratitude into the smack of fresh, chilled air, searching with gaped mouth for the moon and finding only streetlamps, he collapsed onto the concrete beneath him, still holding its warmth from the day like the skin of a child plucked from her bed. He pressed his forehead to its knobby surface, muttered one final prayer of thanks, and then, with stupendous effort, rose and walked out into the night.
