She clamps it on around her neck, holds the cross in front of her nose, and gives it a good stare before tucking it into her shirt. Then she smiles beautifully.
“Did God really tell you to buy this for me?”
“He sure did,” I lie. “I’m really thinking about turning around my life and avoiding hell. Giving my life to Jesus and all the rest. I just have to sort through some issues first, but your dedication, the fact that you stand out here three times a week, the strength of your faith is amazing and really won me over.”
Her eyes open wide and I can tell I’m totally making her day, like she was waiting for some sort of signal from god, some sort of affirmation, and I’m her miracle, so I just keep piling it on, talking about being a changed man, and wanting to live a good life, and spending eternity with her in heaven.
Inside I start to feel terrible, thinking about how disappointed she’ll be when she sees the news tonight—how crushing that will be for her—and I wonder if her faith will be able to withstand it.
I think god is just a fairy tale, but I’m really starting to like the fact that Lauren has faith.
Don’t know why.
It’s weird.
A contradiction, maybe.
Or maybe it’s like wanting little kids to believe in Santa after someone else already ruined it for you, or you just figured out that your parents were Santa after all and the magic of Christmas instantly evaporated. But thinking about my destroying her faith by tricking her and then killing myself really starts to bring me down, until I just can’t lie to her anymore.
“Life can be really hard, you know. It makes it difficult to believe in god sometimes, but I’m trying—for you, and maybe for me too,” I say, and then I just start to fucking cry. I’m not sure why. Man, I bawl and bawl.
She hugs me and I clutch her, sob into her neck that smells like vanilla extract baking inside cookies—so fucking wonderful!
The sad suits and briefcases pass us in droves, but no one even seems to notice us as I drink her up.
“God works in mysterious ways,” she says, and rubs my back all motherly. “This world is a test. It’s hard. But I will continue to pray for you. We could pray together. You could come to church with me. It would help you. My father will help you too.”
She’s saying all of these really nice things, trying to comfort me the only way she knows how, and I love just being on someone’s radar so much that I start kissing her neck and then her mouth. Our tongues touch, and she kisses me back for a fraction of a second—
Her mouth is so warm
and wet and mint-y
from the gum she’s
chewing and my
heart’s pulsing spikes
of adrenaline through
my veins, which is
exciting and
animalistic and
primal, but maybe not
quite what I was
expecting, because I
thought kissing
Lauren would be like
the epic kisses in
Bogie films, like the
string section would
kick in and I’d get
that swirling feeling
Baback’s playing
produces, and Lauren
would pause to gaze
at me and say, “I like
that. I’d like more,”
just like Bacall says—
in that infamous
husky voice—to
Bogie in The Big
Sleep, and when I
kissed her glossy
battleship-gray lips
again, she’d say,
“That’s even better,”
but instead it’s just
the hot sweaty rush of
bodies mangling
when they maybe
shouldn’t even be
mingling—and she
tries to push me away,
but the rush forces me
to hold on to her tight,
even though I want to
let go, even though I
should really LET
GO!, so she turns her
face from my mouth
and yells “Stop” in
this high-pitched
squeal that is the
complete antithesis of
Bacall’s warm sexy
brassy voice and
when I keep kissing
her cheek and ear, she
smashes my chin with
the heel of her hand,
jolting my brain back
to reality and
knocking off my
Bogart hat in the
process.
I stagger backward and then pick up my fedora.
The warm rush freezes into a heavy lump in my chest and suddenly I feel so so shitty—like I need to vomit.
“Is there a problem here?” says this subway rent-a-cop who has magically appeared. He has this dirt moustache that makes him seem about twelve years old. He’s hilarious-looking in his official uniform with the little silver badge. Almost cute. Like a kid wearing a Halloween costume.