Love in Color: Mythical Tales from Around the World, Retold(11)
But our line of work was dangerous. We didn’t talk about it much because it was a given, we didn’t talk about it much because what was the point? We both knew that being together made us powerful and therefore it exponentially increased the risk. We were double the threat to a lot of people in the tall glass towers. We didn’t talk about it much, but when we chose somewhere to live, it was a sweet neighbourhood just outside of the city, gated with security. We didn’t talk about it much, but we agreed we didn’t want children, even though we both cooed over your nieces in the same way. I saw the look in your eye. We didn’t talk about it much, but one day you started kissing me longer before you left the house, started telling me to ‘be careful, baby’, brushing your thumb across my lips in a way that pulled a smile out of me and then made me pull you in and say ‘hey, you be careful, baby, or we’ll have a baby’. We didn’t talk about it much, but one morning, you pulled me back into bed, whispered into my neck that we should both miss work. Our clients were going at it again, which was frustrating, as they had bigger, common enemies to focus on. It was stressful for both of us, to the point where we were starting to bring it home. We spent the whole day in our bed, white and cushiony, within the clouds themselves. I’d never felt more alive than when you made me breathless; and taking your breath away made me feel like God must have when he poured life into the earth.
When I got a call that said that you had been in a car-crash, a non-accidental car-crash, all the iron in my blood drew together in blocks and dragged me down to the floor, weighed me down and kept me there. I no longer felt like God. I was so pathetically mortal. We were so pathetically mortal.
And you knew, didn’t you? I’ve found things out, done research and gone digging in your locked drawers. How could you keep it from me? They were after me, but you found them first, and dismantled their operation. 1,001 nights you kept me alive without me knowing. They found out it was you and figured that killing you would be worse than killing me anyway. They don’t know me. Only I take your breath away. Only I have that right. The universe knows it. I’ve made them pay. It was easy; they’re weak. They won’t come near us again. My turn to protect you.
So here you are, my darling, in the in-between of life and death, with tubes and wires and beeping, soft amber eyes shut from me, your storybook closed, and I need your eyes to open, because we are not a once upon a time, we are a forever within an ever, and I drank the whole bottle of wine yesterday to see if I could taste me through you, but all I did was get heavy and slow and cry on your side of the bed . . .
I hate you.
Do not break your promise.
They said that I should talk to you every day, that it might get you out of this indefinite state, that you may hear and come back to me – please come back to me – so I’ve been talking to you. At first, I didn’t know what I would say. I struggled. Every time I tried, I cried. I don’t cry. You know that. So today I told you the story of us, talking about you like you were another person, because somehow it’s easier to divorce my you from the you lying here in this bed, breathing through a contraption. But they are both my yous. 1,001 nights, but there has to be more. This is sacred.
This is a love story.
Psyche
This couldn’t be happening.
Psy watched as the non-fat soy latté seeped and spread into the white of her top, which in turn stuck to her skin. She stared down at it as if she could make the stain disappear through mere willpower. Somehow, she had already ruined her Promotion Outfit. After two years of coffee runs, late-night calls about fixing copy, and inserting anti-anxiety suppositories into the anus of a grouchy Pomeranian, Psy had decided that today was the day she was going to ask Venus Lucius – her boss, (tor)mentor and Olympus magazine’s fashion editor – if she could be promoted from her assistant to an editor in her own right. While it was true that for two years she’d told everyone her job title was ‘editor’ anyway, she figured she was finally ready for this not to be a lie concocted to impress aunties, old high-school frenemies and men from dating apps with MFAs. She’d dressed for this occasion, hoping her outfit screamed ‘ready to not pick up your dog shit, Venus – seriously, stop feeding her caviar’. Her sleeveless white mock-turtleneck top was meant to show she was a sophisticated, empowered woman unafraid to embrace her femininity, but, with the coffee stain, it now screamed: idiot who can’t be trusted to not spill hot beverages, never mind be trusted to not spill crucial industry tea.
‘Shit!’ She grabbed a handful of napkins from her tan leather tote, a result of late nights at the office and fast food, and dabbed with frantic futility. She knew the stain wouldn’t go away, but maybe she could reduce the stench of inner-city coffee shop on her skin.
Alongside missing her morning coffee, Venus hated misattributed scents – lipglosses that smelt like strawberry, candles that were meant to smell like ‘Christmas’, and as such she would inevitably abhor assistants who smelt like non-fat soy lattés. Once, Psy had made the mistake of switching up her daily perfume and Venus had called her into her office and asked why she was ‘disrupting her olfactory peace’ with a foreign scent when she had just got used to Psy’s ‘70%-off suburban department store effluvium’. It had been a long couple of years. When Psy had passed her probationary period, which had involved trials such as sorting a heap of mysteriously label-less clothes by designer (and then by season, and then by year), she’d thought that things were bound to improve. However, just like when she thought Venus wouldn’t mind a spinach salad when they ran out of kale at the deli, Psy had been very wrong. It seemed that the more capable Psy proved herself to be, the more Venus sought to test her. If Psy was forever three steps ahead, Venus ensured she elongated the path to success. So, this time, Psy had decided to take the leap and create her own path, pitch an actual idea rather than trying to hitch on to an existing one, and she had a feeling Venus might be more inclined to hear her out if she didn’t rock up with a stained top.