“HE’LL LEAVE YOU,” WEASEL SAID.
“Shut up,” Jordache replied to the unseen speaker, huddled under her covers, totally in the dark, too hot, not caring.
“He got what he needed from you. Same as I did. Same as any guy gets what they want before bolting. Because you ain’t worth shit other than that honey trap between your legs.”
Jordache tossed the covers off and sat up on the bed. She was naked. She’d met Danny that way because it felt right, but now she could only see her nudity as proof that Weasel had a point. But fuck Weasel. He didn’t get to have points anymore. She’d seen him decay. She’d seen him die. She’d seen him taken away to Yosemite in a black van after he was dead, watching him kick and scream. She’d seen him on Bobby Baltimore’s program, Season 2, Episode 4, at 21:46. But somehow, she’d also seen him shot, in the arm, in the torso, not in the head. That little video seemed to come from behind her own eyes as if projected there by someone else, by a tall man with a cold voice that didn’t warble like it should. That video of Weasel being wounded, savaged, dragging his sorry undead ass to safety like a coward.
He was in Yosemite. Not here, in her trailer.
But Jordache saw her ex right where she nonetheless expected him to be, given the direction of his voice. His arm was tattered flesh, black at the edges, bones protruding. His face was half sloughed away, his teeth exposed even when his lips were closed. His eyes had receded too much around the eyeballs, making him look too intense, like he was paying an insane amount of attention. But his stupid little mustache still seemed to be there — testament to the fact that even after he’d died, he hadn’t given up on being trash.
“Come over here, Sexy,” he said, watching her, looking down at his lap. Whatever might be there was sluggish. He dripped black clumps of something on her clean floor, as if leaking from a sprung hydraulic line. “I’ll still take what you got.”
“You’re not here,” Jordache said.
“No. I’m here. Danny’s the one who’s not.”
“He had to go. He needed to take care of something.”
And he did, too. He’d come. She’d tried to attack him and tear his clothes off, but Danny had actually pushed her back, his eyes almost afraid. She was in bed now because he’d put her there. Because he’d said she was unwell even though she felt stronger and smarter than she ever had. She’d heard Danny coming five minutes before he’d pulled up in front. He’d blinked 430 times that she’d seen in the thirty-six minutes his head had been facing her. That was way more than he normally blinked. It made her think of an apple she’d eaten once, when she’d been four, when she’d bitten too far into the core and swallowed a seed. Her friend Ginny had told Jordache that apple seeds contained cyanide and Jordache had tried to throw it up, found herself unable, and had spent the night expecting to die.
“If he wanted you,” Weasel said, “he would have stayed.”
“He got a text.”
“He faked the text, and you know it.”
It was true. Of course she knew it, though the last person she wanted to hear it from was Weasel, who wasn’t even here.
“You should eat something,” Weasel said.
“Go away.”
“There’s not much left. Maybe you could eat your own arm.”
“Danny will be back soon. Or in the morning, if he needs all the time he thinks he might.”
“Danny is gone. Forever. Where would he need to go, then come back? Except, of course, to fuck someone else.”
“Danny’s not like that.” Jordache got up and began dressing. She put on her shoes first. Then took them off. Then put them on. Then took them off. Then put them on. Then she remembered that socks went before shoes and gave up, all of it too overwhelming.
Her eyes went to the clock. It was 10:35.
Weasel laughed.
“You’ll never make it until morning,” he said.