Chapter 4

4

Jonathan

There is a reason I never take drugs recreationally. I am very sensitive. I have strong feelings.

Right now I have too-strong feelings. Maybe I did die. Maybe the old me is gone. Maybe he left behind this hollow chamber, which is currently filling with lust.

I am supposed to keep myself separate from the world but I do have sex—more often than I like to admit. I promise myself that I will practice containment, but sometimes I want sex so badly that it becomes the greater danger.

Every time, I act surprised to find that fucking leads to more fucking. That sex leads to more sex. That horniness is not a disease that can be cured but rather one that can be cultivated. One that can and will consume me.

All that I can really say in defense of sex is that it is more moral than murder. On the scale of my sins, I tend to avoid guilt for that one.

Unless the guilt gets me off.

Eva is sitting across from me in her assigned seat. She is gazing out the window. Her legs are crossed. Her eyelashes are feathered. My heart is on a chain that is tied around her ankle.

Thank God for our fellow passenger, folded neatly in his seat. He is the only thing keeping me from peaking.

I am fighting the Ecstasy, but it is knocking at the top of my skull, swelling under my skin. I am rubbing my palms so much that I will have an RSI tomorrow.

My eyes keep being dragged in her direction. I force myself to look out the window. To look at the ceiling. To look at the floor. Every time, I drift. Every time, I land on her.

"You feeling okay?" Her eyes are on me now. Her eyes are so wide that they seem to melt, smoky wet, down her face.

"Better," I say. She looks pointedly at my hands. I stuff them into my jacket pockets. "What brings you to Europe?" I ask, trying to take the attention off me and put it on her, where it belongs.

"Vacation." She smiles dreamily.

"How long have you been gone?" I ask.

Her expression punctures a little. "A long time. Too long. What about you? What's your story?"

I open my mouth to answer her; then I shut it quickly. I shut it because I realize I was about to tell her the truth. I was about to tell her everything. Lay it out on the line to a stranger, with a bullet in my chest.

I do not feel the pain of the bullet anymore. I do not even feel alive. I can feel myself sometimes drifting over our heads, like the drugs have made me a Grecian god watching the performance of my own life.

"Same. Vacation," my mouth says.

She sighs and leans back, as if satisfied by this. "I love being an American in Europe. Don't you? It's like living in a fantasy world. Like nothing is real, as long as you never go home."

My heart stops. Or at least it feels like it does. It is like she is speaking words I wrote. "They must hate us," I finally say. "The Europeans."

She moves closer to me. "Of course they do. We forget there are rules and laws and governments here, too. All we see are the Eiffel Tower, the museums and the gardens."

"And McDonald's."

She laughs. "Of course." She reaches up, hooks her hand above her head and talks to the ceiling. "We don't belong here, and there's something absolutely freeing about that, you know?"

"Yes." I cannot stop looking at her, entranced. Sometimes I feel like I have gone my whole life never fully agreeing with anyone. Never fully understanding anyone. And though I tell myself that it is impossible, sometimes I cannot stop myself from believing that a stranger might be the one who finally gets me.

That a stranger might understand something vital about the world that nobody else ever seems to understand: You can do whatever you want. You do not have to play by the rules. You can kill people and drive fast cars and dress in designer clothes and no one will stop you. No one can. You cannot even stop yourself.

My fingers start moving again. I can hear them rustling in my pockets. Rubbing my palms.

"Are you nervous?" she says.

I start to say something but it catches in my throat, so I make a pathetic nuh sound. I am actually quite harmless like this. Mostly. "Are you traveling alone?" I ask.

Her face cracks. "What?"

I am not used to having conversations, so I tend to skip the ordinary parts in favor of the important parts. Are you taken? Good, I will take you.

"Do you have a partner?"

"Oh . " She tilts her head, putting something together lightning quick.

"Is that a yes?"

"No."

"So it is a no?"

"Yes."

"I think you are very pretty," I tell her engagingly. I am so fucking pathetic.

She frowns. "Are you sure you just took a Dramamine?"

I cannot tell her what I really took, so I say, "I think so."

"You're rubbing your legs."

I look down. She is right. My hands have escaped from my pockets and are now rubbing my legs. I break a smile. "I think I might have accidentally taken the wrong pill."

"But you don't feel sick anymore?"

"No."

She smirks. "Then I guess it worked."