Burn Down The Night (37 page)

I run. Smashing my way through, knocking people
down in my panic to get to Tamara. I know something terrible has happened.

Two guys are trying to break down the door.
Making half-hearted attempts.

"Tamara!" I yell through the door. There is no
sound on the other side. I know what I'll find in there and I am scared.
"Tamara!"
I
scream at her.

The silence comes out at me. The two guys at the
door are freaked out, just trying to get in to piss or something, and suddenly I'm doing some
kind of number they don't understand.

I throw myself at the door, hurting my shoulder.
The door is thick, hard to break down.

"Help me! Help me get it open!" I scream, and
the urgency, the panic in my voice, gets me some volunteers.

Four of us hit the door. Hinges start tearing
loose. We hit it again, hard, and this time we knock it off its pins. The door crashes open,
hanging by one hinge.

The door hides her from my sight. I grab the
door and drag it aside, flinging it away from me. The light is on in the bathroom and she is in
there.

Oh, Jesus!

Four months pregnant, love and hope
betrayed.

I walk inside, my insides frozen.

"Tamara."

There's blood everywhere.

I put my arms around her, pull her to me. I lift
her head up. The arms, wrists slit and bloody, dangle loosely against me. The razor blade lies
beside her. Her eyes stare up at me. She has that look on her face.

That look.

I hold her against me, hold her
tight.

I see it as it happened. See her bolting the
door. The look in her eyes as she takes the razor and runs it across both wrists. And then,
bending over the toilet, so the blood doesn't get on the floor, kneeling there. Waiting to die,
feeling her life draining away.

And the loss of blood makes her weak. She gets
dizzy and leans over and all the lies and promises I made are rattling around in her
mind.

My body betrayed her. It betrayed me. It
couldn't let go of the idea that you can be young forever.

I brought her to this, as surely as if I had
held the razor blade in my own hands.

I see it all.

And that look on
her face.

The head falls,
the knees give out. The heart slow­ing, so weak now, she faints, falls forward. Maybe by now that
other little heartbeat inside her falling silent, dead.

Tamara. I have not
given you a pretty way to die.

She
falls.

Her head goes into
the toilet.

And she drowns.

I turn the stereo
on. Put some old blues records on to suit my mood.

It's my birthday
and I want to do something different. I don't want it to be like the way I usually spend
Christmas holidays, the way I usually spend my birthdays. For a change, instead of sitting in a
hotel room full of strangers a thousand miles from a home I don't have, instead of staying alone
in an empty apartment with bare wails, I want this birthday to be special, unlike all the
others.

Not gonna get
drunk all by myself or in a bar with strangers or with some girl I pick up in a bar and whose
name, tomorrow, I won't remember.

No cake. No party.
No friends to catch me by sur­prise. That would be the same as always but this birthday will
still be different.

I go in and turn
the record player up, let the blues echo through this empty apartment. Take the phone off the
hook. I'm not expecting any calls on my birth­day. Not that I ever do. Cancel my subscription to
the Resurrection.

Sit in the kitchen
staring at the birthday present I gave myself.

The music pounds
in my head. I've heard that song all my life. Always the same song. That song that says "I've
been singing the blues ever since the world began."

Her cat comes into
the kitchen, a gray bedraggled-looking tomcat with fleas and sad yellow eyes. He had been a
stranger once who had appeared one night at her door, cold and hungry. She fed him and got him
warm and loved him and... he had stayed.

She really loved
that cat.

The cat comes all
the way into the room, walking all around the kitchen, putting his nose into every corner, still
looking for her. I've tried to get the cat to eat but he won't touch his food. In the middle of
the night I had heard him crying out for her.

He just prowls
restlessly through the apartment now, as if she were behind some door he had yet to go through,
where somehow, magically, she waits for him.

And she is behind
a door. The one that never opens after you go through it once. The one on her coffin.

I didn't go to her
funeral because I wanted to sit here and celebrate my birthday. I didn't go to the funeral
because I had no tears, because in the hard life I'd lived, I had never learned how to cry and I
would want to at her funeral.

It is on the
table. My birthday present.

I open the bottle
and tilt it. I count my present out into my hand.

Twenty birthday
presents.

It is going to be
different this time. Not like my other birthdays.

I open my mouth
and drink some beer so my birthday presents don't stick in my throat. They feel good going down.
I swallow them all.

I feel comfortable
here in the kitchen because it is a room that belongs to her.

The cat rubs up
against my ankle, lonely. I bend down and pick him up. I hold him in my lap. But touching him is
like touching her and I have to let him go. Gently, I put him back on the floor.

He stares at me,
with sorrowful eyes from under the kitchen table, wanting to be held and not understand­ing why I
can't do it.

The truth is, I
don't want to touch anyone, living or dead. Not anymore. I am too tired. I am having a busy
morning on my birthday and I am too tired. Very busy.

I spent the whole
morning trying to write a suicide note that would say it all.

Couldn't.

Forgive me,
Tamara. This suicide for my birthday is the best apology I know. There is no apology in the world
that can apologize enough because ultimately what I have to say to you is... I am sorry I killed
you. I am sorry I wasted your life and love on someone who did not know he needed either of them
until it was too late.

Today I lose your
face in my birthday celebration, but never that look, that awful look of betrayal and loss I saw
in your eyes.

There is something
I should have done but forgot to do. Forgot to lock the front door. Too late now. Not that the
world outside has any reason to want to come in. The light is gone in this cave, in this soul
kitchen, and no one will ever live here again.

Not that it
matters about the front door. Nobody can stop me from celebrating my birthday now.

I can feel my
birthday presents opening up inside me.

Happy
Birthday!!

It all happens so
slowly. My head gets heavy, as I knew it would, and I try to lean over on the kitchen table. I
slip and fall out of the chair. It is like diving into a tunnel, a tunnel made of black winds and
approaching night.

"You take my
breath away." I said that to her the first day I met her. It seems a good time to remember that
now.

Funny how the
ceiling looks as I lay on my back on the kitchen floor. I stare at the bright light hanging from
the ceiling, watching the blackness eating away all the brightness. Funny-looking ceiling, all
wavy and shimmery.

The cat touches my
face with his paw, missing her too, his loneliness matching mine.

I want him to go
away. Don't want to be touched. I want to punish myself by being alone, by being totally alone.
Too weak to push him away.

He lays down
beside me. Puts his head against mine. We share the same broken heart.

And then I am glad
he is there.

And I cry for both
of us.