Get your ass over here - her voice whispered over the phone. The man I shall call Paul must have only just left her side. He was her once and future boyfriend, the man who paid for her apartment six months in advance. I was not to know that, nor that the term was soon to expire. It was a day after Thanksgiving break. I had plunged myself into working overtime each day of it, and I had been at the shop alone, concentrating on work, knowing Paul had returned. Perhaps - and she had held out some hope in this regard - he returned only to say he would not return again. Perhaps Zoe had said to him something to this effect: I'm in love with John now. You have to go. Perhaps an alien spaceship would land in the lake and establish a new world order to insure we would all have the same hairstyle.
I had two cars. I probably drove the van. It doesn't matter which one. When I arrived, after climbing up all those stairs, I knocked on her door, and it seemed that I had not been there for many years though it was three days ago I had woken up next to her knowing it was the day Paul would arrive.
She greeted me wearing nothing but a sleeveless ribbed tee shirt and her eyeglasses. I'll bet she was dying to take the contacts out. In her right hand - as though about to slip through her fingers which seemed to hold its neck unaware of it - was a liter of vodka, mostly empty. This sight took me aback momentarily. She grabbed me by my collar, either of my shirt or jacket, or both, and pulled me inside. Zoe was a strong girl, with long arms and legs - deadly legs. I had only recently been kicked by them.
I'm not finished with you, she said.
Sho-now, Sister... said I.
What happened over the weekend I cannot imagine in its entirety, but she showed me a video Paul had taken while he was there - that they both had taken - with the camcorder he had given her months before - before they split up. It was video of the two of them together. He had painted a picture of himself on her abdomen, her belly.
I guess I broke your heart, said she.
I replied with complete honesty - something I was loath to do.
What heart?
And so, we continued. Paul could only break away from his very time-consuming government job two hundred miles away every two weeks or so. He would do this by working double shifts, or whatever was necessary. I never knew him, except as a voice on her answering machine begging, pleading, making all kinds of threats. By then, she would be sleeping, or whatever it is we do that looks like sleeping.
Paul would not allow Zoe to drink while he was there. Sometimes I would see them out and about together, on the street. She would be smiling, no eyeglasses on, and wearing make-up. Her eyes would be different. Well, she would be different. She was not the same person, and I would only see her when she changed.
Changed.
I didn't know I was looking in a mirror when I looked at Sister Midnight. I didn't yet know that I was a changing person too. But I had called her "sister" because I called all women "sister." My quaint affectations defined me. Now I understood that there were times when she was Zoe, and other times when she stopped being Zoe. Over the next several weeks I began to notice the exact moment of change. Her head would drop towards the bar. She would put her face into her hands to support it so that her fingertips dislodged her eyeglasses slightly. It was sleep - after a fashion. It was the death of Zoe Lilja, and it was followed by the birth of Sister Midnight.
The name came from an Iggy Pop song playing in my van. It suited her.
Calling Sister Midnight, You put a beggar in my heart.
Calling Sister Midnight, I'm a breakage inside.
Sometimes I would get a call from the Thirsty Dog. Spud. Get down here, man. Your girlfriend locked herself in the bathroom again. And I would go. I would have the kids in my care and I would go anyway, bundling them into the car after midnight, them wondering why.
I'm not finished with you.
The room was quite dark. The Best of Leonard Cohen was over. Paul had bought her a large stereo - one of those compact numbers with the bass cannon that looked as though it might lift off and return to its home planet any time. From my position on her futon I could barely discern her silouhette against the dim light coming in through the windows from the street. The county courthouse was right across the way. Its stained-glass windows looked like a face. I heard her talking to her legs - or maybe talking to the cats who twined around them. One of her birds was on her shoulder, the other on her head. At night her paintings came to life. The room was covered with them - brightly colored primitives of animals, trees, whales flying in outer space, oceans filled with impossible fish with too many eyes.
I would feel rather than see her body collapse next to mine, perhaps the back of her head barely visible. But the odor of Sister Midnight I will never forget. I can close my eyes and allow it to come back to me now. It was the smell of love, sickening, the same smell of old liquor that came out of me. Old liquor and sweat. I craved it. I would put my nose into her back and breathe it in. Luxurious.
While I drifted in and out of consciousness Sister Midnight spoke in a low flat voice. She spoke as if automatically, as if possessed of something, a need to speak which was so compelling it would continue in her sleep. It was her story. It was all of her story, from birth to death. I can say that because she was already dead, and so was I. We were in Hell, but we were together in Hell. Our togetherness - the comfort it gave us - was the worst of the suffering.
I'm not finished with you.
My part to play was explicitly clear. My job was to listen. My role was to hear. Over the course of the next several months it seemed that life began after midnight. The rest of time was like a dream, but she was real. We were real. I began to imagine that when her story ended we would both cease to exist.
And that story - oh, how I wish I could tell you. I wish I could tell anybody, just to get it out of my head. But the reason she told me...
Well, the truth is I have no idea why she told me what it was clear she told no one else. I had no heart, perhaps. When she was low on cash I arranged it so that the boys who wanted her had to pay. And, if there weren't any boys around I would pay for her myself out of my meager earnings, most of which we spent on drink anyway.
Then, there was that fat kid, the one who was in love with her. He came to the door one morning. I spied through the high window in her attic room that it was him. Took the little baseball bat downstairs with me. Now, this kid swore he loved her, swore and ranted and raved. I told him, You know not love over and over again to his protestations.
You know not love.
Through the winter now. It was a long winter. The story continued. Every night I was with her my entire world was being remade. The things I thought I knew were one by one turning into lies. The story she told was about a world I had never imagined. Today I look at young girls dressed all in black, pretending to embrace darkness and misery. I laugh at them.
It's me - John. Relax. I'm here.
What's she doing?
Sleeping, sort of.
Did she take her contacts out?
Yes, Paul. She never had them in. She only wears them when you're here.
Thank God. I may never return.
Promises, promises...
You have no idea.
You're wrong about that, Paul. Come as you plan. She'll be ready. No harm will come to her tonight. I'll be here.
I had to do that. I had to pick up the phone. I couldn't stand to hear his voice on the machine begging and crying. It was pathetic.
You'll stay all night?
Yeah. She's not finished with me.
Promise?
Yeah.
If she wakes up and smokes she could set her hair on fire.
I know, I know. Got it covered. Stop worrying.
I can't stop.
I know that too.