Chapter 13

Chapter

Thirteen

F our years, three months, and nineteen days.

"You told me six months!"

"I lied."

"You told me there was a mugger!"

"I lied."

"You—you told me I had no name. That no one knew who I was. You told me—"

You whirl. "I LIED!" You scream it, spittle flying.

Your voice echoes like thunder, reverberates.

"Why?" I back away from you. Emotions are at a boil within me, rising up into my throat like magma welling up the chute of a volcano and bursting against my teeth like vomit. "Why?"

You sag backward against the window, like a hot-air balloon with the furnace extinguished. "I couldn't face telling you the truth. Your parents were dead. Cremated, I believe, or buried in an unmarked grave. Everything you knew was gone. You remembered nothing. Nothing. I couldn't just leave you there, without a single memory, without even your name. No one to ever visit you. You'd just waste away there. But what could I do? If I had told you the truth about yourself, what good would it have done? Your family's apartment was long gone, everything sold off or thrown away. I had no proof of anything. You, as Isabel de la Vega, existed only in my head. What would you do with that name, that identity? Nothing. It would be useless information. Like knowing the capital of New York is Albany, it would mean nothing to you. But for me... you were still Isabel. The girl I..."

You trail off, an admission aborted. I wonder what you were going to say? The girl I— what?

I am feeling so many things, I cannot even parse a single thought out. Anger. Confusion. Compassion; yes, for you. I understand. In your place, what would I have done? I ask myself this but come up with no answer.

"And at first, you were merely this... body, alive, awake, but... empty. I don't know how to even describe you, in those first days. You couldn't speak. You were weak, your muscles essentially atrophied, although the staff had done at least the bare minimum to keep you from getting bedsores and complete atrophy. You weren't even really aware of yourself or me or anything. You were just... there."

You push away from the window, wipe your face with your palm. "During the four years you were in the coma, I built my empire as Caleb Indigo. I created a whole new identity. New social security, new driver's license, a credit history, work history. It will hold up to even the most stringent investigation. I paid several fortunes to make sure Caleb Indigo was a complete and real human being with a life any detective or federal investigator would believe, no matter how closely they looked. There are even actors on retainer with entire albums full of doctored photographs and memorized, scripted memories of me, should someone go looking. Jakob Kasparek is dead, and Caleb Indigo is alive. He's real. He's me. I'm him. I became him, completely. I took speech therapy classes to eradicate my accent. I took acting classes to more fully realize my new identity as Caleb, to sell him as a person even to myself. Business classes to learn how to be a legitimate businessman, not just a pimp or dealer. I built a new empire from scratch. A better one. A legal one—well, mostly legal. But that's a different story. This is about you."

"Is it?"

You don't hear me. "By the time you woke up, I was lifetimes more wealthy than I'd ever been as Jakob. I was in the process of building a tower, a skyscraper of my very own. When it was clear you were awake and would not be suddenly regaining your memory, but that you were physically well, I took you out of the facility. Against their wishes, and against the rather vigorous objections of the doctor. That was the last time I signed my name as Jakob Kasparek. I signed you out, and they let me. I brought you to my partially finished tower and put you in an apartment, and brought therapists to you, to help you relearn to speak, to walk, everything. About this time was when I realized I couldn't tell you who you really were. You were different. You woke up... different. I don't know. The girl I had known was gone. You were twenty years old and had no identity."

You glance at me, to make sure I'm listening. "I know you want to hear me admit that I saw it as my opportunity to... I don't know... create you to be the person I wanted you to be. And I suppose on some unconscious level there was an element of that. I helped... sculpt your new identity, but you chose it all. I didn't force it on you. I brought you to the museum as something to do, and you didn't want to leave. I wheeled you in your wheelchair from painting to painting, exhibit to exhibit. And you made me stop at the Madame X . That was real. I didn't do that. It was you . I sent you books, brought them to you, box after box after box. I brought all kinds of books. Classics, modern fiction, histories, biographies, crime, everything. And you chose what you wanted. You read what you wanted. And for two, almost three years, all I tried to do was help you... find yourself, I suppose. I taught you things, yes. Manners, bearing, presence. How to intimidate people. How to read people. I did not create Madame X—not alone. That was us, Isabel. I had no reason to think you'd ever regain your memories. So while I accept as valid your anger over what you perceive as me lying to you, that isn't quite fair. But then, life is not fair, is it?"

"How old am I?"

You blink, roll your shoulders, as if to shrug off the mantle of the past. "How old are you? Twenty-six."

"And my birthday?"

You smile, a faint, lukewarm thing, as if you've forgotten how. "July second, 1989."

"And how old are you?"

"I was born in 1976, in Prague, what is now the Czech Republic. I am thirty-nine years old."

"So when we first met . . . ?"

"You were fourteen and I was twenty-seven."

"And when you first fucked me?"

"This?"

I lift my chin. "Yes, Caleb. This."

You sigh. Pass your hand through your hair. You look so much younger than thirty-nine. Thirty, at most, I would guess. "You woke up when you were twenty, nearing twenty-one. It took... something like two and a half years of therapy before you were fully functioning, before you had complete autonomy over your speech, over fine and broad motor control, all that. In that time you were learning, reading, becoming Madame X."

"Caleb."

"I waited three years, Isabel—"

"Was I a virgin?" I ask, cutting in over you.

You wipe your face with both hands. "Isabel—"

" Was I a virgin ?" I demand again. "You told me I wasn't. And now you're telling me I was. I don't remember, and I can't believe anything you say, clearly. How am I supposed to sort the truth from the lies?"

"You were a virgin. That's the truth."

"Why lie about it?"

A shrug, almost insouciant. "I didn't want to risk bringing up…all of this. Answering the questions I knew you'd have if you knew you were a virgin when we first slept together."

"Call it what it was, Caleb—you fucking me."

You lean close, suddenly fierce. "Oh no, Isabel. That's not what it was at all. You wanted it. You wanted me . You didn't know me, not as the man you'd known before the accident, but your body knew mine. You wanted me. So don't think you can pin that on me. I'll take responsibility for the lies, but I never took from you anything you didn't want to give me, sexually. Not then, at least."

"How old was I?" I ask. "When you—when we first had sex?"

"You were twenty-three. The first time I touched you sexually was on your twenty-third birthday."

"Why then?"

"You needed time to regain full mobility," You say, with a sigh and a shrug. "And I needed to make sure you weren't going to suddenly regain your memories. I lived in constant fear of that. I always have. I've dreaded and feared this day, when I would have to lay all this out for you. Try to make you understand... everything. I waited. Six years, I waited. I wanted you from the first moment I saw you that day on Fifth Avenue. I craved you after you kissed me in the alley. I thought I might go crazy with the need for you. And then you were in the coma for four years, and I watched you age, day by day, yet remain the same. And then you woke up, and you were no one. So I had to help you rebuild yourself. Or not re build, but... create a self. I couldn't touch you. I knew I couldn't. You had no way of consenting, of knowing what you would be consenting to, and that was not something I took lightly. But as the years went by it became clear to me that despite not knowing me, not remembering me, your body remembered your attraction to me. That was the same. You wanted me. You didn't seem to know what to do with it or how to act on it or what it meant, though. So I resisted it. Fought off my need for you, every single day for three years. I bathed you when you were helpless. Dressed you. Fed you. Taught you to do all those things for yourself. I was faced with the temptation of your naked body every single day, but I couldn't touch you. Couldn't have you. You wanted me, I wanted you, but I couldn't have you."

You halt. Swallow hard. Turn away. Scrape your fingers through your hair yet again. Fist your hand at your side. Clear your throat.

"My vow, to you and to myself, was that I would wait until your twenty-third birthday. If you were totally well, independent, and in possession of all your faculties and motor skills, and still showed evidence of desiring me, I would allow myself to explore a physical relationship with you. But not until then."

"So that day in my kitchen, when you came up behind me, not quite touching me..."

"I was on fire. I was mad, crazed. I'd abstained from physical contact of any kind with anyone for three months prior, in anticipation of that day." You turn to face me, stare at me, seeing me as I was then, perhaps. "You... hummed with sexual energy. Vibrated with it. And when I got close to you, you fairly radiated with need. It took every ounce of self-control I had to go slowly. To ease into it. All I wanted was to just... take you. Bend you over that counter and fuck you so hard it would shake the foundations of the earth."

"That's how it felt to me, that day. It felt as if you just took me, as if you fucked me exactly that hard. You took possession of me that day."

Your gaze becomes anchored in the now, fierce, hot, and wild. "Yes. I did. I'd waited seven years for that day. I took care of you, saw to your every need. Gave you everything I knew how to give you. And yes, when it became clear you welcomed my touch, I took possession of what was mine ."

You advance on me. Stalk toward me, predatory, hungry. I back away, gripping the edges of my robe and tugging them more tightly closed. I back up until the wall of the elevator bank is at my back, and I can back away no farther. You stop, inches from me. Hands at your sides. Chest heaving. Eyes burning into mine. You spoke of me radiating sexual energy.

In that moment, you radiate thus. You burn, you hum, you are a living conflagration of sexual need.

Tears prick my eyes. My stomach twists. My heart is spiked through.

Because my body . . . it reacts.

Comes alive.

I thought I was past this, but I am not.

I never will be, I do not think.

"You cannot deny it, Isabel," you whisper. Your lips brush against mine, a feather-light, not-quite touch, not-yet kiss. "You cannot deny that I ... own ... your ... body . I own your past. I own your soul . And you know it."

You take my hips in your hands. I feel you erect between us.

Again.

Here I am, again . Facing you. Facing myself. Battling the demon that is my body's instinctive reaction to you. And I must face that it is not just my body, but some powerful portion of who I am that is reacting thus to you.

But I cannot do this again. I cannot. I cannot.

Will not.

"But you do not own my heart, and you do not own my future." I find it hard to breathe as I say this. Indeed, the words are gasped. Squeezed through the slivers of space between my tight-clenched teeth.

A breath leaves you. A single sigh.

I force myself to look at you. To meet your gaze. To know viscerally and down to the pit of my soul the gnashing pain in your eyes as you absorb my words.

Your shoulders lift. Brows lower. Your jaw flexes. Dark eyes go molten with... sorrow? Rage? Some potent conflation of both?

Your hand rises up from my waist.

Fingers curl. Fingers tighten around my throat. Your eyes on mine.

My airway is constricted. I cannot breathe. Stars burst behind my eyes.

"You . . . are . . . MINE." This, from you, is a snarling hiss.

I am lifted up, off the ground. My vision narrows.

I do not fight you. This is the price I must pay. You gave me truth, finally. I believe every word you said, and more that you didn't say, the word writ large and bold and bloody between the lines.

Your chest heaves. A sound emerges from you, a feral growl emitting from deep in your gut.

I feel oxygen rush through my teeth, into my lungs. Your fingers unclench. Slowly, ever so slowly. As if some invisible force is prizing each of your fingertips from my throat.

My feet once more touch the floor, and I collapse to my hands and knees, gasping, clutching my throat.

Watching through tear-blurred eyes as you back away. Hand still raised, as if still wrapped around my throat. A step back, another. A third.

A moment passes, in which I attempt to breathe, and you merely stare at me, jaw flexing, eyes narrowed, a blaze of emotion bleeding through your normally-flat brown gaze.

And then you reach into your pocket. Bring up your cell phone. Dial a number. Hold the handset to your ear. "It is time." And then you end the call, replace the device in your pocket.

A tableau, then. You, staring at me, hands fisted at your sides. Me, on my knees, robe coming open, hair in my eyes, breath rasping painfully through a bruised windpipe. Staring back at you.

Hands lift me to my feet. Pull me away. I do not take my eyes off you as I am drawn onto the elevator.

I see you, as I so often have, through the narrowing perspective of the closing elevator doors:

Tall, straight. Broad shoulders. Night-black hair swept back. Tailored suit clinging perfectly to your godlike physique. Hands at your sides, fists clenched. I see them trembling, see the way your jaw muscles flex and tense. Your brow is furrowed. Your gaze is rife, fraught, wild, molten brown.

You are a god.

You have been my god.

And I am walking away from you.

I have turned away from you. Denied you.

Chosen my future.

I put my palms on my belly, cup the slight bump. You see this gesture, and you flinch. Your head rocks back on your neck. The doors close, and I catch one last glimpse of you.

I cannot be sure, but it seemed as if you were falling to your knees, head drooping.

I do not believe that, though.

I close my eyes and I see you. Standing tall. Imperious. Gorgeous, perfect, cold, a statue carved from living marble. A Roman god made flesh.

You are my god no longer.