And you can use my skin//To bury secrets in [Quest]

Quest Hertz

***

So be it, I’m your crowbar

If that’s what I am so far

Until you get out of this mess

And I will pretend

That I don’t know of your sins

Until you are ready to confess

But all the time, all the time

I’ll know, I’ll know

***

I spent a lot of time hiding myself away from the world.

Dr. Lindsey and I have been working on unpacking a whole lot of things. It seemed reasonable to me after coming back from the dead that I might need someone to talk to.

Well, that’s not really true.

Ether told me that if I didn’t go see someone that he was going to stop talking to me.

I had a particularly rough night a few weeks after the eighty-first. We were stocking some shitty beer underneath the bar, and he dropped a few bottles on the floor. They shattered in a hundred pieces and made a mess at our feet, glass all over. Opening was in another twenty minutes, and there were other things I’d wanted to tend to. So I started shitting on him about how he always rushed, and waited to do things until the last minute. I told him how he’d been that way his whole life, that if he wasn’t my brother he wouldn’t have a job, that the world was a lot kinder to him than it’d ever been to me.

And he listened. He knelt down with the glass and swept it with a little broom and tray, making sure to get every last piece before taking it to the trash can at the other end of the bar. Glass pieces clattered into the plastic against the metal of the tin. He got the mop and bucket, and started on the floor. All the while I stood with my hands on my hips. “You know you could go faster,” I think I’d said, “We don’t have time before people start getting here.” But he didn’t speak. The mop groaned in the bucket as he pulled it back to squeeze out the soapy water, and then splattered on the floor. He pushed it back and forth, wiping away the mess.

‘You’re so angry all the time,’ He’d said, putting the mop back into the bucket. ‘And I love you, but you’re always so angry.’ He shook his head, and gave a shrug. ‘You make me walk on eggshells, Quest. Like – at the littlest thing, you get mad. And flame out.’ For a red head like me, he wasn’t near and dear to the stereotype. Collected, and restrained. ‘You need to talk to someone. Not me. Someone that can help. Or I’m going to walk.’

“Go fuck yourself.” It came out so naturally, but – this wasn’t the usual, curse at him, disagree, rinse and repeat. He took off his apron and placed it on the countertop of the bar, and walked right out the heavy wooden door with a slam. I stood there, watching the entrance, waiting for him to come marching right on back. He had to come back, didn’t he? He needed me a lot more than I needed him, anyway. I was the one with the bar, the name, the ideas. He just so happened to be related to me.

Except the night came and went. Regulars took their spots at the red stools lining the bar, and folks came in to play pool or listen to the jukebox. There was a whole set of records from before the dark days you could play extra to play that I rotated in and out. I busied myself with pouring drinks. I shat on the tributes of the last games when their faces came on the tv above the bar, and poked at the sixes that didn’t hold a candle to me or Parson. When the clock on the wall behind me read four a.m. in blocky red letters, I waved out the last of the drunks, the sleepy old gentlemen and a few stray twenty-somethings that spilled themselves out onto the street.

Nothing feels more alone than closing a bar by yourself at four a.m. I don’t want to sound too dramatic. I was properly annoyed that I had to clean the toilet on my own, and wipe down the hardwood of the bar. I loved that place well enough I wasn’t so bothered to clean the mysterious sticky spots on the floor, or in the booths along the windows. But I do remember how infuriated I was, scrubbing away at one of the seats, thinking that it should’ve been Ether there to help me. Who the fuck did he think he was to tell me how to live my life? And angry? Well I wasn’t angry that often. And it wasn’t as though I didn’t have a right to be! He hadn’t lived through hell, wanted to die, then been brought back to be trapped in this goddamned shit hole yet again.

Besides, dad hadn’t gone and sold all of his stuff, or given an interview about how you were a disappointment for not even making top eight. Fuck both of them.

But halfway through the rage, about five thirty-four in the morning or so, I felt the winds shift. I missed him, and his stupid face. I missed how we sang along to old records, or drank whiskey while we sat underneath the bar, marveling that we could be doing something different with their lives. Something our own, together. We’d gone and excised the toxic fat from our lives, and hadn’t looked back.

I tossed my sponge into the waiting bucket, and sat back against the hardwood. I fucking hated when Ether was right, because more often than not he seemed to be.

One of my regulars had mentioned a guy that ran sessions out of his apartment. He wasn’t so much breaking the law, though I don’t imagine there were too many actual psychiatrists on the books. This whole district should’ve had one with what we’ve done and seen.

Dr. Lindsey and I used sessions to unpack all the shit that was making me angry. It’s what led me here.

I got my visa to district two on the premise that I was selling a shipment of my beer for some local distributors. One of them had tasted it in the ratmas market and told me that it was impressive for a lower district. The sort of condescension that I properly love, but, luckily enough, I like money more. He decided to buy a few kegs worth, and I thought I’d come to personally deliver them. The dead eyed civil servant that had stamped my papers reminded me that these visits were strictly for business, and I nodded along, because – well, fuck I wasn’t going to say that I’d be making an unspecified stop on my trip, now would I?

I spent the afternoon walking along the sidewalks near the train station. I looked in the shop fronts at jewelry on display. I saw how the gray stone on the front of their buildings seemed white and fresh. Garbage trucks went by from time to time, and there was hardly any summer hot garbage smell. There were a lot of folks that seemed to be running, whether for training, or just for fun. Not quite as many leather skinned old men and women with hunched backs, or men trying to sell knock-offs on street corners. The sky was visible overhead, not that I didn’t see blue from time to time, but even back home we spent nine months of the year in gray, overcast, and empty.

Dr. Lindsey had spent a good deal of time on how I felt about other people. We talked about how I tended not to view other folks as equals. Or rather, that I deconstructed a lot of folks down into their parts (Ether was slow, lazy, and unambitious in comparison to me, I’d said). But that I let myself pass this judgment so I didn’t have to see the whole person. That maybe I spent a lot of time focused on what I didn’t like about someone as a way of making sure those flaws didn’t come back to hurt me.

'You’re lonely,' He’d said during one of our sessions.

“No, I just don’t have a lot of friends.” He didn’t have one of those leather chairs I thought he’d have, but instead kept me on an old plaid couch while he took notes from his recliner. He had a rather empty living room, with a coffee table, a television, and litter box for a cat that I’d never seen in the corner. He had a picture of himself with I assume his parents hanging up over the television.

‘You seem to pride yourself on that.’

I thought about the moment when I’d sat there, and turned over how much I pushed back folks around me. I tested them, saw if they’d break or yield. Protected against what they might’ve wanted to do to me. I had to in district six.

‘But do you ever think that sometimes you might give yourself a second to breathe? Sometimes people do everything they need to show you who they are.’

I was supposed to be better. I’d stared down death, gotten to see the other side (spoiler alert, it’s black, and more black), and woke up with tubes in my body and a new lease on life. But as far as I’d gotten, I still haven’t even started down a better path. At least, I hadn’t gotten very far. Maybe tragedy wasn’t as much of a teacher as people made her out to be.

Ether got me to regret how after all was said and done, I’d done nothing to show the people that mattered that I did appreciate the shit they’d done for me. And I think, without many healthy friendships in my life, I’d had a harder time giving out after receiving. There was a lot more ways to get hurt when you put out the energy, only to feel like it wasn’t returned. Except I hadn’t thought about how many folks are just doing their best to get by – how many people did they have in their lives that they needed to sort through? How little energy did they have to pick up the phone, send a letter, or show up at their door unannounced to say they were sorry?

I admitted I hadn’t been a good friend, not when it’d mattered most. I hadn’t picked up the phone to Carmen, I hadn’t written to Shy. Hadn’t thought about Wander, or the others who I’d mowed down to stay alive. And a part of me might’ve been too tired. It was exhausting feeling much of anything at all, or sitting with those feelings too long. It was better to keep moving, because then I only needed to feel some of that at one time. For the things that didn’t work out, there was always anger, which could flare up and burn away. Or sarcasm, to tear apart the things that I hadn’t liked.

Fiona had come to visit. I felt ashamed, after. Not because she had come to visit, but that I hadn’t once thought about going to her. And I knew that she had a shitty life, with no family, no friends. But she had something, then, when she saw me. She was a stronger person that I’d given her credit for. She proved me wrong and I liked that.

So I wandered along the avenues, staring at the blocks of buildings, houses and homes until I came on what was the aubergine residence, little bag of beers in hand. I buzzed at the gatehouse, which was unlit, and empty. I contemplated for a moment walking right up to the iron gate, unhooking the latch, and waltzing up the hill to the front entrance (better not, I reasoned, as fun as that might have been). So I pressed the buzzer again, and waited. I sat for a few good minutes, listening to the branches of the willow on the lawn rustle. I pressed a third time, then a forth, and then over and over again.

‘Can I help you?’ A woman’s voice finally rang out.

“Shy Aubergine, please. Tell him it’s Quest.”

‘Aubergine?’ There was a pause, with a crackle of feedback. ‘I’m afraid the Aubergines don’t live here.’

“Well – did they move? Where the fuck are they?”

‘If they moved, I’m sure your friend would have told you. Did you speak to him recently?’

“Fuck off.”

The buzzer sounded again, the feedback cut off.

“Fuck.” I started, with my hands on my hips. “Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck.” This had to be the right address, didn’t it? Had I written down the wrong place to find him?

“God fucking damn it.”

It would make sense that when I was finally ready to come see him, he wouldn’t be there anymore, wouldn’t it? Thanks, Shy. Thanks for either giving me the wrong address or – just pushing me off, not thinking to let me know where to find you. Or that I hadn’t taken the time in almost a year to speak to him, because I thought it was pretty painful to talk on the phone to someone that had become a part of my life through nothing more than tragedy. And that maybe I didn’t have so much in common with him other than this really painful memory that I tried to move past, so drudging it back up wasn’t exactly on my to-do list. Or that he hadn’t even bothered to pick up the phone to call me. Why was it always that I had to be the one to include the other person? Is it because I’m supposed to be the strong one? That Quest, she’ll snap at you if you say the wrong thing, so maybe it’s for the best not to say anything to her at all.

Well fuck me, huh? The happy ending I got kept going, because stories don’t just end at the end. We still exist, until we’re dead, with hopes and dreams, and lives that can turn to shit.

I would’ve told you that I missed, you, Shy. I would’ve told you that I was sorry I hadn’t talked to you. I would’ve sent you some of my home brews, even if you’re not old enough (because as far as I’m concerned, if you’re fourteen, you were old enough). We could’ve talked shit about the kids running through the games that didn’t hold a candle to the two of us. To you.

I could’ve been a better friend.

I wasn’t ready to be one, I don’t think – but I’m ready now. I’m ready to try, at least, even if I’m not fucking perfect.

Dr. Lindsey had said that I shouldn’t look at it as me trying to fix myself, because then I’d get bogged down in some of the things that couldn’t be fixed. People aren’t machines, you can’t just flip switches or rewrite code. Sometimes people we’ve hurt wouldn’t forgive us, or they’d move on when we haven’t. If we kept looking at it that way we’d get stuck, and hurt a lot worse for what we couldn’t change.

But that didn’t make it any less hard to want to. And I can tell you that I’m not there yet, not by a long shot.

I sat down on the sidewalk, six pack at my side, and cracked open a can. I closed my eyes and listened to the hiss of cicadas in the early evening hours. I listened to the bubbles in the aluminum can gurgle. I let time pass. I cursed Shy again, because fuck him, honestly, and downed the rest of my beer, crinkling it up and tossing it into the street. I opened another one and took a sip.

I folded my knees up to my chest, and sat, waiting.

*I Know, King Princess (feat. Fiona Apple)