Slow Dance in Purgatory

“Don’t you think I want you to stay, Maggie? You’re all I think about. You’re everything I want! Don’t you think I’d keep you here with me if I could?” His voice had grown more strident. It was loud and cutting, reverberating down the empty corridor. Maggie winced and stepped back as if he had struck her. He pressed on ruthlessly.

“I’d give anything to keep pretending – because that’s what we’re doing. We’re playing make believe.” Johnny’s hands fisted in his hair, and he spun, talking as much to himself as to her.

“I was going to stay away from you – I tried so hard. But I saw you. You were so beautiful tonight and so alone, and I couldn’t resist. I had to get closer, and then…. I could see your sadness, and I couldn’t stand it. I told myself I could comfort you, that it would be just for a moment...“

“Why would you even try to stay away?!” Maggie interrupted, as impassioned as he. “What did I do?”

“It’s not what YOU did! It’s what I’m doing to you!” Johnny gaped at her, incredulous.

“Maggie – if this were 1958, and none of this had ever happened, and I was just a guy and you were my girl…..I would hold on to you and never let you go,” Johnny implored huskily, “But it isn’t 1958…and I am not just a guy, in love with his girl.”

Maggie swallowed back the yearning that his words conjured inside her. She stepped toward him again, and he raised his right hand, stepping back, warding her off.

“Maggie! This can’t work! Don’t you understand? I am essentially a ghost. I have no life beyond these walls! This can only hurt you. I will only hurt you.” Johnny’s eyes glittered like twin blue lasers incinerating her with his gaze. He lifted his arm and pointed away from him.

“You have to go.”

“No,” Maggie whispered the word.

“Maggie! Listen to me!”

Maggie covered her ears with shaking hands, defying him.

“Go!” The venom in his voice lashed out like a whip, and Maggie felt the heat radiate off of him like a billowing furnace.

Maggie shook her head vehemently, her eyes filling with angry tears. “I won’t.”

“Oh God!” he moaned, raising his face to the ceiling, in supplication to a higher power. His arms hung at his sides, fists clenched and muscles corded in an effort to resist.

“I love you,” Maggie said honestly, her tears freely falling.

“Maggie, please,” he pleaded with her then, the anger falling away as he moaned in surrender. With a speed that was beyond human, he swept her up against him, burying his face in her hair and crying out her name, over and over. Sinking to the ground with her, he rained kisses on her tear-stained cheeks, on her eyelids, on her soft mouth. His voice thick with emotion, he begged her not to cry, and begged her to forgive him. Then he was gone. Like a star winking out for the last time, he was gone, taking his light and his heat and Maggie’s heart with him.

***

He watched over Maggie as she sat, huddled and crying in the dark corridor. He fought against his desire for her, against the need that buffeted him. Johnny felt her pain calling out to him, but he resisted, knowing that wanting her made him selfish, but loving her demanded he deny himself.

She didn’t leave. With all his might, he willed her to return home to the arms that could hold her and comfort her. He exerted all his energy, which was considerable, to lift her from the floor and set her on her feet. But her will was not his to direct, and her physical self was not an energy he could control. She remained there, huddled in his prison, waiting for him to return.

Johnny watched in agony as she cried herself to sleep, a despondent tumble of arms and legs, lying on the cold linoleum floor. He sent hot air billowing through nearby vents to warm her trembling form and soothe her troubled sleep. Time passed. He watched as the old man, Gus, and his grandson entered the school, their faces grey and drawn with worry. He heard them call her name, ached to direct them to her, and finally, saw them find her.

“Miss Margaret!” Gus rushed to her side, the boy at his heels. “Oh Miss Margaret…what has happened to you, child?” Gus’s voice was thick with fear and sick with dread. He knelt by her sleeping form and rubbed his gnarled hand across her brow and down her bowed back, trying to rouse her.

“Miss Margaret! Are you all right? Wake up, little girl. Wake up, now.” Neither Gus nor Shad would be able to carry her, even as slight as she was, and Maggie was emotionally and physically spent. She slept as if in a stupor, and Gus was getting very little response from her. Johnny fought the instinct to assist the old man, afraid to touch Maggie once more. But he was weak with guilt and grief, and he could not watch any longer.

He crept closer, careful to avoid brushing against the boy or the old man. He knelt at Maggie’s head and stroked her hair without stirring a single strand. Sliding his hands under her head and shoulders, he eased her up slightly and, just as he hoped, she struggled to push herself upright. He whispered her name, and she trembled in response.

“Johnny?” His name was a mournful sound on her lips, and the old man stiffened as if he’d been struck. The boy stumbled back, clearly afraid.