Day 12 - Only Laugh - Chapter 12 (1,616 words)

©Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

ONLY LAUGH WHEN IT HURTS

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 12

Jane unlocked the front door and came in quietly. She had been gone for a few hours, letting Tony sleep. He had looked like he had needed it.

She didn't know what to do any more. They had money, plenty of it and were not wasting the opportunity. They had spent some, but invested most as soon as it arrived. They managed some themselves, some with a money manager and some injected into the business, paying for web masters and PR people to keep the machine running. She was heavily involved in the Tony merchandising machine, milking the profits and guarding his intellectual property. Making sure his cut was always taken.

She had felt guilty, at first but she soon realised that it was not money that drove him to do what he did. She didn't know why he was so intent on being recognisably talented. If that was the motivation. He had claimed that more than once, that he had their attention with the extreme acts of violence on himself, but they stayed for the entertainer who rose and stood after the fall. He was the living and laudable embodiment of the “show must go on”, but even as he said this she felt it false, in her heart.

So she snuck into the house letting him rest. Not wanting to disturb him, afraid of what she might find.

She had to end it before he really hurt himself. She knew it was coming, this escalation only lead to one logical outcome. The ultimate final act before the curtain falls. Maybe she could not stop it, maybe she didn't want to stop it. She definitely did not want to watch it happen though.

When was the right time to leave? Whatever happens next is not her fault, it's because of what might, what WILL, happen next that she needed to leave in the first place.

She could hear Tony's voice in the bed room, along with someone else. Who was that? She came to the door and realised it was John, but she cold not tell what they were talking about in low voices.

Should she knock? She didn't expect to walk in on them doing anything too shocking, she was not looking to catch either one off guard. She wanted to put and end to her fear and misery. She had stayed close to him because it was the right thing to do. Now though she felt like she was truly irrelevant to him. Not that he didn't love her, the opposite if anything, but that he he no longer loved himself, not in a palpable way that meant he'd avoid destructive behaviour.

Jane placed her hand on the door handle and turned it abruptly making the door snap open as she forced a smile and prepared a joke.

“Hope I am not interrupting anything too gay boys... I... what the fuck?”

Just like that her reaction was her new reality. Something she had not expected, could not have predicted and seemed incredible to her.

John looked up at her guiltily, Tony met her gaze defiantly, unashamed and matter of fact.

He was sitting on the bed and his shirt was off, John was sitting behind him and sewing stitches into his back, where a gash of a few centimetres had been cleaned and disinfected. On the bed lay cotton wool and gauze pads for dressing the wounds. There were many. Jane’s hands went to her mouth instinctively and she swore repeatedly through her fingers unable to process what she was seeing.

“Come in and close the door if you want to talk.” Tony nodded at the door but the motion of his head shook his shoulders a little and that jolted the tension on the needle and surgical thread in his assistants hands.

“Tony?” there was a question supposed, and hanging in the gap between them.

“Close the door please, I can feel a draft. I'd rather not catch a cold if you don't mind.”

“A cold? You are sitting there, being hand stitched by your fucking assistants hands! You worry about a cold? What the fuck is going on?” Her mood had escalated to hysterical rapidly. John tied off the stitch he had been tightening and snipped it away. In a few obviously well practised moves he had dressed the wound and taped it over with gauze and cream designed to aid the healing process. Once done he stood up and smoothed his trousers out, looking for dignity in the seconds wasted on preening.

“John? A drink please, Jane?” His look was casual inquiring, and unblinking Jane nodded and looked about the room for the drinks cart. Sure enough there was one. On it was a scalpel and bandages, a sterile tray with buds soaked in blood with what looked like shards of glass sticking out of them. Next to that was a set of glasses, and a bottle of Scotch.

John poured two large neat measures and handed one each to the pair. He looked at the door and nodded at it, saying nothing. Jane stared at him, unmoving until she took the largest swig she could handle of the whisky and then blinked back the choking fire. John looked at Tony, who nodded, and he left in silence.

The door closed and the tension in the room softened a little as she sat on the bed and drained the tumbler of it's contents. Her thoughts of why she had come in were gone.

“Another?” She made for the bottle and pored a bigger measure the second helping. Tony had waggled his glasses to show he was still going on his first, barely touched.

“Are you all right?” Tony asked quietly.

“Am I all right?” She stared at the malted liquid and asked it again of the air. “Am. I. All. Right.?”

“I'm fine, it looks worse than it is.”

“Are you... is this... where is this going to go Tony?”

“Where is what going to go?”

“This self destructive whatever the fuck your life is now. I thought we had gotten past this?”

Tony didn't answer. He had never gotten past anything. He had no idea what anything was or why it was, now he was just trying to understand.

“Are you trying to kill yourself Tony? I don't think I can...” she choked on the rest of the sentence, wondering half way through if perhaps she could have and then at least it would be over.

“Kill myself? No. No I don't think so, I don't think so.” He seemed to seriously consider the answer, in a thoughtful manner that ignored the obvious dark nature of the question.

“You don't think so? Well excuse me if I don't take that as a ringing denial of your suicidal intentions”

“I am not suicidal. I'm … exploring who I am now.” He looked directly at her, trying to communicate something, but even he didn't really know what it was. He wanted to connect with her, wanted someone to care about his journey, someone not paid to care.

“Who are you?”

“Honestly? I don't know, I am trying to find that out. It's not like I am trying to damage myself, more like trying to find out what makes me tick. What makes me, me. What makes me funny.”

“By mutilating yourself?” She was incredulous.

“Oh I didn't do this, this was an … experiment. It just got a little out of hand. That's all this is. Really.” Jane finished her second glass and refilled a third. “Experimenting. Why can't it be drugs, or Jesus it would have been better if you had been fucking John when I walked in, but this?”

“John? He's not my type. Far too butch for me.” He had a grin on his face, and he knew that in this place and time that she would not find it funny, but he did. The worse it could be, the funnier he thought it was. The more people found their limits, the more he added to his own sense of humour.

“You're going to fucking kill yourself, I can't be there, I can't watch that happen, I can't.”

She was openly crying and sobbing at him now and he threw an arm around her and tried to comfort her the only way he could have done.

“I'm not going to kill myself. That's far too obvious.”

Jane laughed despite herself. She gulped down the scotch and tried to stand up, the room spun and she fell backwards on the bed. Tony leaned over her and kissed her while the whole world spun around his head. She raised her hollow feeling arms and put them around his neck, touched the place in his back where the stitches were and pressed gently. Tony groaned and kissed her a little firmer. She dug her fingers in hard and he yelped and opened his mouth. Jane bit his lip hard, and then the world dissolved as she felt her body moving under his, into the shape they made together. The familiar rhythms and patterns engaged and it was beginning.

“Jane? I wasn't expecting this?”

“Shut the fuck up.” She slapped him hard across the face, her hand now smeared in sticky make up that was covering the blackened eyes. She looked at her hand and then into Tony's eyes.

Her hand gripped his hair and threw him sideways. He lay in shock as she sat on him, kissing him more passionately than either one could recall.