Lick the Knife
by Desmond Everett Fuller
I wrapped my scrapes and bruises in Charlotteās old coat and stumbled off to bank distance between me and the asshole whoād saved my life without asking first how I felt about it.
Freezing fog spread a woolen darkness over the Sound from Northgate to Rainer Beach. I couldāve told you the names of every ice-slicked street. But I couldnātāve told you mine, or where in the cold I was going.
The medic whoād revived me had announced that I hadnāt passed over but had bailed off the bike Iād stolen in a rundown place called second chances. Red-headed, barrel-chested, he looked NordicāOdin in Adidas and a ball cap. Heād warned me: Iād sustained a concussion. By his curbside diagnosis, if I couldnāt walk a toe-heel line, neither could my memories.
With big warm hands, heād disentangled me from spokes and brake cables. I hadnāt done anything to warrant walking away from my crashāpedaling fast through frozen corners. The medic peeled back my eyelids, dilating my pupils with a pen light. āYou know the saying? āHe that licks the knife cuts his tongue?āāā I had cut my tongue. His thumb swabbed inside my mouth and came away red. I tasted loose change and dick. It was pointless trying to tell him that I didnāt have health insurance, that Iād just been at the hospital and biked away into the night minus my only friend. It wouldnāt matter to him that her name was Charlotte.
āHey, man,ā he said. āAt least youāre in better shape than the Marinersā batting lineup.ā Was he trained to talk this way when escorting someone back into the world, like everything on our side of the veil was jokes and baseball? Charlotte had loved baseball. We both had.
The medic gave me water. A soft bottle, almost a plastic bag. I gripped it against rising dizziness and shook my head. No way in hell would I go to the hospital. I spat blood and meant it. The medic shrugged. Putting his card in Charlotteās coat pocket, he said, āNormally I donāt do this.ā Heād told me: stay awake, call in the morning so heād know I was okay. Hadnāt he? Or had I lost the way it happened through the crack in my head where the past was coming and going?
Charlotteās coat smells of stale bread. Weāre too far from a Northgate back room where weāre crashing, too crashed out to care about getting back there. We lie on a bed of leaves tucked away in the forests of Golden Gardens. Night is briny and marrow-damp. Charlotte coughs, complains of chest pains. In a few hours her heart will seize beside me. For now, she tries to read my palm, but itās too dark to see the future.
Seattle in winter was wet without end. All my bones shrank away from it. I wobbled, a rubber suit of myself. Leaving the well-meaning medic and the broken bikeāif I was alive come morning, Iād steal anotherāI went looking for someplace warm to lie down. All I wanted was to be warm and for whatever came next to not be up to me.
Iām ten when my parents tell me the world is ending. They load a pipe with pungent buds, nod sagely, and burnāthe world is ending. When Iām twenty-five, it hasnāt finished ending. In a hospital waiting room, Iām waiting for Charlotte. Waiting for my friend. Until a nurse brings me her coat thatās no longer warm. I smell stale bread and wait for something more. But thereās only the flat white florescence of waiting rooms and everything still slowly ending.
There were no stars. Lamppost coronas grew white hairs of light that spidered from street to street. Beneath the frozen-over sky, I trudged along. Until I was passing a yellow house, where I spied keys left hanging in the lock and gleaming in the porchlight.
It wasnāt for me. I knew that. But the yellow was a beacon, and the doorknob was cold, painful to grip. My hand hurt. My tongue hurt. Thinking hurt. So I didnāt think. I opened the door and passed through the door. Because the yellow was a beacon, and the keys were left hanging in the lock gleaming in the porchlight, and that, right then, that was all I needed.
Inside was good quiet. Maybe the last warm place on earth. Bookshelves soaked in lamp light. A laptop slept on a utility-spool coffee table. In a galley kitchen, dried flowers hung in bunches tied with string. A Space Needle magnet pinned a flight itinerary to the fridgeāsomeone was flying home on Wednesday. As Charlotteās heart stopped, a radio in the hospital waiting area had played āTop-Down Tuesday: counting back the hits!ā But how long had I pedaled black-iced streets since then? Minutes, hours, weeks, some other absurd increment?
When her mania turns sunny, before it brittles, Charlotte bakes a cake from a boxed mix. We find it in someoneās cupboardsātheyāre not home, and weāve forgotten their names. We wonāt stay longāwe never do. She writes the dayās date in chocolate frosting. āItās today, today!ā she says. āCongratulations! Weāre still here!ā
The house where Iād come in from the cold was a clutter of a coupleās mementos: polished river stones lined windowsills, birthday-party Polaroids, two electric-toothbrush docks, two pillows. In the bedroom, a man slept alone on his side of the bed. His chest rose and fell in big exhales.
āKeep the lights on,ā Charlotte says. āWho knows what our souls get up to in the dark. They might walk out on us.ā We sleep bundled in our coats. When I canāt sleep, I watch Charlotte. Her chest scarcely moves, her breathing, silent. She could fool you for dead. I fix on the pulsing artery in her throat for assurance that, wherever weāve ended up, weāll both still be here in the morning.
On the side of the bed someone was flying home to, I lay down next to the man. The pillow smelled like laundry and flowers and hair. It smelled like a long time agoāclean scalp and a girlās Chapstick in sixth grade. I grew dense and heavy and bit down on the temptation to sink out through the bottom of it all.
The man licked his lips. He winced against a dream but stayed down in it. I stayed very still. From a shaving cut and two moles on his cheek, I traced a tiny constellation and named it Charlotte. In a birthmark at his temple, I found my parents I hadnāt seen in years. I found my sixth-grade crush from when talking on the phone was more than talking on the phone, from when talking on the phone had buoyed us through end-of-world darkness.
The man slept on. I got up. Blood from my tongue got on the pillow. I felt dizzy and nauseous, as my hands began dancing and wouldnāt stop.
Charlotte says, "I'd rather bite my tongue than my cheek, it heals faster." Weāre in line for EBT benefits. The line isnāt moving. Charlotte needs things to talk about, so she talks would-you-rathers of bodily harm. āThird-degree burns over slivers of glass any day.ā With EBT, we can eat. We can attend baseball games and symphonies with subsidized tickets. Almost nobody knows about it, but itās part of how we keep showing up for another day. Without Beethoven, without Brahms, without a playoff wildcard, Charlotte might not last the year. āExecution? Go old school: firing squad and a final cigarette all the way.ā Iām stalling, thinking sheāll think lying down in front of a car and waiting to be run over is a boring choice. With a sniff of disapproval, she can make you disappear while youāre standing next to her. A Human-Services lady announces to the queue: everyone will have to come back tomorrow. Charlotte stretches her arms up high and shouts, āTomorrowās a Ponzi scheme!ā
I wasn't from the Sound or the city. I was from a small town over the mountains. Somewhere no one cared about. Finding my way here is how Charlotte found me. It wasnāt sex or future. Sometimes we broke car windows. Sometimes we went up in blue flame, waving farewell to our former selves departing in smoke. We were castaways, and that held us together. When the Mariners lost, we cheered anyway. Seattle of the King DomeāGriffy Jr, Johnson, Buhnerāof reasonable rents in wry old neighborhoods, that was all long gone. But we were here. We slept in our coats in sublet rooms, on friends-of-former-friendās mildewed couches, under trees in city parks. We slept through and missed Ichiro. We slept together so we didnāt have to sleep alone. We slept with the lights on.
In the sleeping manās living room, I sat on the couch in the lamplight and waited for my hands to slow down, gazing at books on the shelves. It helped my hands to hold onto something. So I picked up a paperback small enough to fit in Charlotteās coat pocket next to the medicās card and his ask to call by morning. I let the book open, and I read.
A winterās night from inside a silent house passes with slowness nothing else can claim. Over a few hours, I read the whole slim volume. It was a collection of stories. They showed me windows in my head I hadnāt known could open. The characters had unpaid utilities and duct-taped shoes. They had vitamin deficiencies. They all had, because we all have, at least one perfect moment they would never forget or get back to.
By the last page, I nearly forgot, nearly turned to Charlotte to tell her about it. The silence was ongoing. For a moment, I wished my red-bearded medic hadnāt pulled me back from the wet black gate between worlds where Charlotte had left me behind. His Viking ancestors had pillaged and burned villagesāthe shadow of their sails compelled you to lie down in the mud that had been your life. Now, their atoning descendent dashed around saving people, never wondering how long ago theyād stopped believing in second chances. Because stories werenāt enough. My only friend was gone and probably wouldāve laughed at this book and at me for liking it. She could make you feel left behind without leaving the room, without ever having been there.
Charlotte throws a library copy of The Bell Jar into Lake Union after carrying it around for a week. Not for reading, but for people to see her with it and see her as she wants them to believe she is. I watch the hardcover sink into the shallows greasy with sunshine, knowing better than to say anything. The regular season is fading, along with hopes for a playoff wildcard. We stand out of place in the summer grass and breathing light. Charlotteās yelling at young people out enjoying the lake and their lives that make sense on a late September afternoon.
October night, weāre jawing around Udub and those Greek streets. We go to a college guyās place. Though Charlotte insists sheās anti-intellectual. There are pink welts where sheās scratched her forearms. So weāre making an exception. She inspects the college guyās books and tells him heās got a lot of old white men on his shelves. He smirks and says to look in the other roomāthereās more old white men on the shelves in there. Then he sells us stuff thatās nothing we havenāt seen before. Charlotteās spitting out what sheās rubbed into her gums, claiming that heās stepped all over it, that I didnāt call him out, that I always cave around that masculine-energy trip, that Iām a typical Aquariusāalways just tagging along.
My leg had fallen asleep. So I shifted my butt on the couch and dropped the book. On the inside of the cover, someone had written:
With love, always!
Alicia
Itās just a note somebody wrote to somebody else. In a different time. I know.
But
before Iād woken up in the medicās arms, before Charlotte hadnāt woken up ever again,
before a lot of things,
Iād been a kid, still on the near side of many different possibilities.
In my house, no one turns the lights on. My parents say every flipped switch fuels a burning world. They cultivate a dimness heavy with Pine-Sol and pot smoke. Shadows in the hallway to our bathroom stretches on and onāsometimes Iām too scared to go. In my sixth-grade class, a girl named Alicia has acne and broomcorn hair. When I ask why sheās calling, she says thatās what you do when you want to talk to someone. We tie up our parentsā landlines, hold the phones till our elbows cramp and our ears are hot. Her favorite color is yellow. She tunes a radio to Mariners games, and we keep score together. We call each other boyfriend and girlfriend but weāre too young to be anything breakable. We make up each otherās horoscopes. We make wishes that wonāt come true. Alicia wishes her momās boyfriend would drop dead. I wish my parents would buy lightbulbs and stock the fridge. She wishes I was better boyfriend material. Before I can wish to feel more fully like anything, her momās boyfriend shouts in her background. Alicia says. āIāve locked my door.ā From behind the door, her momās boyfriend is barking like a spaniel. I say, āI love you.ā Alicia says, āI donāt care.ā Her breathing is quick and frightened. āWill you stay awake with me?ā And I do. There are nights when the dark in my house spreads through the rooms, around the cardboard over the windows, out across roads and houses and woods and fields until all light is driven underground, and no distance remains between her voice and mine.
Senior year, Iām at a party where everyone tracks melting snow onto someoneās parentsā carpet. Everyone knows everyone, at least vaguely. By then, I still only know anyone vaguely. The landline in my house is gone. No one talks on the phone anymore. Alicia and I havenāt talked much at all. High school is a different country with better boyfriend material.
But I avoid going home if I can help it: the heat is never on, and my parents have unplugged the fridge. Itās better to stay too long at a party I wasnāt invited to than wonder where I might go at 2 AM in December. Everyone else is sitting close together. When Alicia leaves with a guy named Tanner, I follow them outside.
Deep drifts of snow reflect full-blast moonlight. Aliciaās eyes are hard and bright with it. I ask if her momās old boyfriendās out of the picture, just to know if anythingās gotten better for one of us. She throws those cold eyes like she doesnāt recognize me, like our voices had never crossed great distances to hide in one another.
Now Tanner opens his passenger door for her. He tells me to make tracks. Instead, I lie down on the snow in front of his car. Something essential is hanging beyond my reach. I have no hope of getting it. But I put my head under his tire so someone else has to be part of it. Muffled behind the windshield, Tanner asks, āWhat exactly the fuck?ā
Then he backs up and drives around me. I cough on car exhaust and wonder how long I can lie here and watch the stars grow colder. Moonlit snow buries all the hometown details I donāt want to see. Down the white middle of the road, everything has been erased. Iām passing through the moment before conception, before everything but me will get a miraculous do-over.
From the sleeping manās couch, I suddenly heard him groan. A groan of door hinges. I glimpsed the back of his head going into the bathroom. Behind the bathroom door, his piss pinged against the toilet. When he came out, the bathroom door opening blocked me from view. I stayed very still, until he began to snore again.
Iād been remembering Alicia. In the book in my hands, some other Alicia, someone Iād never met, had written: With love, always! My tongue throbbed. Alicia and Charlotte began dovetailing, streaming out through the hairline crack in my head:
Alicia says into the phone, āWill you stay awake with me?ā
Charlotte says into the dank gloom of Golden Gardens that weāre told to make the world our ownābut itās not that kind of place. Everyone fusses over the wrong things. In a decade, the rainforests will be gone. Blue whales are making their last migrations. But weāre scandalous for trying to buy eleven-percent-ABV Belgian ale with EBT cards. āItās literally more nutritious than Wonderbread!ā Charlotte hisses at a cashier in a new boutique grocery. It comes in blue bottles corked by monks from an abbey in Belgium. Most of our income supports their lives of contemplation. Their ale supports us keeping off harder stuff. Wherever we stay fills with blue glass. When our welcomes wear out, this is what we leave behind.
Charlotte tells me about an airline pilot who threw his headset across the cockpit and, according to witnesses, declared, "This is not okay." Later, he testified that, in attempting to crash the plane, heād been trying to wake up from a nightmare.
Alicia says, āWill you stay awake?ā
Flailing out of sleep on the sleeping manās couch, I kicked away dreams and bruised my shin on the coffee table. The laptop there slid onto the floor with a soft thump.
I stayed still and silent. I held onto the book of stories. If Iād moved from the couch, I mightāve stood right out of myself and started walking through walls. That seemed more plausible than being on my own, more likely than finding a place to stay and a job and health insurance for the next time I briefly left the earthās surface.
I scooped up the laptop. Itād been left plugged in, fan whirling, hadnāt powered down, hadnāt been asleep at all. I didnāt even have to log in. I stared into the blue screen light experts claim disrupts sleep and keeps us gnawing at the raw unholy hours. The keys had been left hanging in the lock and gleaming in the porchlight. And when I clicked the browser, it loaded the sleeping manās social feed. This could happen, I knew. And it was happening to me. But it made me wonder if I wasnāt already a ghost.
Scrolling events in the lives of the sleeping manās friends and family, I reacted with hearts and more hearts. His nephewās little-league trophy and grass-stained knees. A study-abroad buddy had proposed to his boyfriend on a mountain top. Someone in his hometown was growing azaleas.
Whatever the ID in my wallet claimed about me, I couldnātāve guessed without peeking. But Aliciaās full name came to me without trying. I typed it next to the magnifying-glass icon.
Nowadays, she worked on a flower farm. Her profile picture backdropped in an echinacea field. She didnāt look like anyone Iād known from when weād whispered across phonelines. I thought, probably, she wasnāt that person. Maybe it didnāt matter.
From the sleeping manās profile, I DMād her. I wrote that someone Iād loved had died. But stories in this book that found me in this house had saved my life for at least a couple hours. And when I imagined a color for love, yellow fell closest to forever.
I signed off, love, always!
Because I hadnāt died, and love went on in an awful current tessellating around me.
In the other room, the sleeping man stirred and moaned.
Because coming back hurts every time.
If I made it to the door before he woke up, Iād leave the keys hanging in the lock and gleaming in the porchlightāas theyād been when Iād needed them.
If I made it out of the house, a couple planets masquerading as stars might gouge holes through the frozen fog and help me find my way.
If I made it down the street, Iād read this book again through yellow streaks of daybreak.
If I made it to the last page, Iād fish the medicās card out of Charlotteās coat pocket. Iād stumble over words, my tongue still swollen but healing faster than I couldāve believed. If I could recall it by then, Iād tell him my name. If no name came to me, Iād tell him Iād come from over the mountains.
If I made it that far. I'd ask if he'd read this book. And man, I was sure it would dredge the chambers of his heart like it had mine. He might believe me. We might meet for coffee. We might read each other's palms. His lifeline would forgive all his marauding Viking ancestors. The whorl of my thumb would be a labyrinth with many exits. Weād figure the Mariners wildcard odds, debate whether the Astros or the Yankees were the bigger assholes in the American LeagueāCharlotte wouldāve said, āItās a trick question.ā Then, my well-meaning medic and I, we shake on us both being right. And his hands around mine are pink and warm like the moment right before weāre born, before the first light we ever see;
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