Michael is woken up by the sound of Belle banging and clattering around the room, wardrobe doors flung open, items thrown on the dresser table, clothes littered across the floor. He feels a sense of urgency, panic; something unfamiliar that he has not seen in her before. He sits upright on the bed and continues to watch her.
“Are you not going to work today?” he asks. She looks up at him.
“No,” she replies, sighing deep and heavy. She sits on the edge of the bed. “They didn’t call me in, said they won’t need me for today and all of next week.”
“Oh? Okay, so you get some free time.”
“Yeah, but I’d rather have the money.” She stops still, for a moment, looking down long and hard at the floor, as if looking into another world.
“Look, let’s get some breakfast in you, first. We can sort out life stuff later.” Michael moves over and holds her. She lays herself into his body, and he kisses her on the cheek. He feels a sense of relief; quiet, sweet relief.
Michael’s in the kitchen, frying up some eggs, making his special blend of avocado, tomato, and onion to go in a wrap. Belle sits on the sofa, knees folded up to her chest, warming her hands with a cup of coffee that she has not yet taken a sip of, staring into the television even though it is switched off. He brings the food to her on a plate. She seems surprised to see him, and the food.
“Ah, you didn’t have to,” she says, her voice subdued under its own weight.
“I know. I wanted to,” he says, perky and enthusiastic, as he sits next to her. She barely touches her food; she unwraps it with her fork and takes a bite, and fiddles with the rest.
“I have to go out later,” she says, “and sort a few things out.”
“Okay. Can I come with?”
“What?”
“Yeah, I’ll come with you. We could get lunch after.”
“Oh… okay,” she says, with a slight stutter. “Okay. You would do that. Thank you.”
“Of course.”
They leave the apartment and walk down toward the 135th Street station. The cold air reminds him how much of a privilege it is to have known warmth. The sun is bright in the sky. Belle paces ahead of him; her small, staccato steps always two ahead of his. They enter the station and get on the train, eerily empty for a weekday afternoon. They get out at 116th Street. Michael follows Belle into the CVS pharmacy. She comes back with only a few items and stuffs them into her large shoulder bag. He follows her out.
They walk to cross over to the other side of the road. She holds him back and says “Wait,” until it is time to cross. They cross and head into the bank. He tells her he’ll wait outside. She goes ahead. He looks out into the street, watching the myriad people passing by, indifferent to his existence. Maybe he seems more like them than he thought; a mother and child, rapturous teenagers, men standing on the corner. In the places that he knows the least, he blends in and disappears, and feels more at home. I guess home is wherever you are met as if you never left, wherever you see a reflection of yourself.
Belle walks out of the bank, head lowered in dismay. Michael catches up to her and places his arm around her, and gestures for food. She nods. They walk into a soul food restaurant, where they are playing nineties R&B. His head bops to the music, but beside him Belle remains still. They sit at a table in the corner next to the window.
“Are you ready to order?” Jackie, the waitress, says, with a spark in her smile. Michael looks up at the waitress, then back down at Belle, who has not responded at all.
“Hellooooo?” Michael says, and waves his hand in front of Belle; frustration in his tone.
“What?” she replies sharply.
“Ready to order?”
They place their order. The food arrives met by their silence.
“Aren’t you going to eat?”
She looks up at him and then back down to her food.
“Is your meal okay?” the waiter asks, passing.
“Everything is perfect, thank you,” Michael replies for himself and Belle, who does not even move.
“Okay, so are you going to tell me what the hell is going on?” Michael drops his knife and fork onto the plate; the clang of cutlery echoes.
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve been sulking since morning and haven’t even eaten anything all day. It’s like you’re a completely different person.”
“SO?” Belle roars, causing a few heads to turn.
“I don’t know what’s going on, but you’ve got to talk to me, babe.” Michael reaches over to her hand across the table. She moves it away as he touches her.
“Wow. So, it’s like that.”
“It’s not like anything. You wouldn’t understand.” She sighs deeply and folds her face into her palm.
“Tell me…”
“Look, I’m broke. I need to make rent this month, I’m already behind, and I could end up being kicked out of my apartment. Then my job calls and says they don’t need me. It’s too much.”
“What? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“What for?”
“So, I can help you.” She says nothing and looks down away from him again.
“I don’t need you to do that. I can take care of myself.”
“How much do you need?”
“I said I can take care of it.”
“And I said how much?”
“At least a grand.”
“How much?!” Michael nearly coughs up the orange juice he is drinking.
“A thousand dollars… it would buy me some time.”
“Oh, damn.”
“And maybe like, another hundred bucks ’cause I also got a fine jumping a fucking turnstile the other day.” Belle huffs, then continues. “Anyway, I don’t need you to come in and play Superman. I’ll make my own money how I’ve always done.”
“Wait, are you going to go and…?”
“What, is there a problem?”
“What about us?”
“What about us?”
“I mean, are we not together?”
“What the fuck? So that means I can’t go and…”
“Strip? No. Of course not.”
“I don’t strip, I dance.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
“Listen, I don’t know who you think you are, coming outta nowhere, trying to control me. You don’t own me.”
“You’re right. I don’t own you, Belle… but I don’t mean nothing to you?” Michael asks almost pleadingly. The restaurant falls into a synchronized silence; the conversations, the waiters, the music playing in the background all held on the same note as if a fermata hovered above them.
“Man, fuck you, and your guilt-trippin’ ass. Your broke ass was cryin’ over five hundred dollars the other day, and you think you can help me.”
Belle stands up, knocking her chair backward onto the floor—the people around them gasp as she runs out of the door.
“Belle!” Michael desperately calls her name, but she is out of the door before he can even finish. He leaves $50 on the table and chases after her.
He catches a glimpse of her shiny burgundy-red coat, with its hood up, heading down the steps into the subway. He heads down the flight of stairs in one giant leap.
“Belle!” he shouts, as he watches her enter through the turnstiles. He rummages through his pockets for his MetroCard, then just runs and jumps over the turnstile.
“Belle!”
He sees her standing at the end of the train platform and paces over to her.
“Belle,” he says, quieter, softer. He places his hands on her shoulders and looks into her eyes, empty.
$1,230
“I don’t understand, Belle, why won’t you let me help you?”
“You wouldn’t understand, Michael. You don’t come from where I come from. You don’t know what I’ve been through.”
“But that doesn’t mean I can’t help.”
Belle scoffs and walks past him toward the other end of the platform, as the beaming light of the train emerges from the hollow darkness of the tunnel. Michael takes rapid steps to catch up with her, and stands in front, blocking her path. He tries to speak, but the roar of the train, and its screeching as it slows, is too loud for him to edge out a word. Belle and Michael stand in front of each other, eyes sinking in each other’s depths. The train doors open and the passengers exit, floating by them as though they are ghosts, and Belle and Michael are the only living things in this world. The train leaves, and silence follows.
“I just want to make everything okay for you…,” Michael says, voice quivering.
“But you can’t, you didn’t come here for me. I am not your responsibility”—Belle sighs—“and I won’t allow myself to be your burden neither.”
“I can fix things…”
“You can’t! You think it ends here, at just the money? There’s too much. And I can’t let you in, I won’t. I’ve always been fixing all this shit by myself, one way or another for years, and I’ll fix this by myself too…”
“You don’t always have to be strong…”
“I got no choice but to be. My mother had to be, and her mother before her. My daughter will have to be too. Shit ain’t gon’ change. All these years, if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s to rely on no one, especially not no man. People always disappoint you in the end, and I won’t give you the chance. I should have never even let it get this far in the first place.”
Belle walks past Michael, this time pushing past him resentfully. Her steps echo along the tunnel. Michael’s heavy steps follow. The roar of another train appearing consumes them both.
“What the fuck do you mean?” Michael shouts, and grabs Belle by her shoulder, turning her around.
“I mean this shit should have never happened. Us. Whatever it is that’s going on here. I let it go too far, and I’m done.”
“I can’t believe this,” Michael mumbles bitterly as the doors open and the passengers exit the train. “Well, if you’re really done,” he continues, “then you’ll get on this train, and you’ll never see me again.” The train doors remain tauntingly open, as if longer than usual. Michael closes his eyes as she walks back past him; maybe he even says a prayer to a god he doesn’t believe in. He turns around to look for Belle and she is gone. He sees her on the carriage as the train pulls away. It moves in slow motion; one carriage passes, then the next, then the next, until the whole train roars and disappears into the everlasting darkness.
Michael makes his way back to the apartment in Brooklyn. He stops at an ATM and checks his balance: $1,200. He withdraws everything and stuffs the money into his side pocket, still clutching it in his hand. Maybe I should just throw it all away or burn the money and be done with all of this now. Fuck it, because I have had enough. There for everyone else, but not for myself. This is always how my life unfolds, unravels. Yet nobody sees it, nobody knows what it’s like to bear this weight, this suffering. Nobody ever believes me, believes my sadness. I am alone in this. And I never let anyone know the true extent of how I feel, because it is so deep that I am frightened of what I will do to myself if it ever gets close enough to the surface. And in the meantime, what do I do? I watch, and watch, as if I were prey, as people come and exploit and eradicate, bit by bit, any semblance of joy, of peace, that I may have to hold on to.
I had to fight through all kinds of madness just to be here, I can’t walk down the street without being reminded about some pain I have felt; this kid stabbed over there, this person shot, this person in prison, this person raped, and over an ocean away, I have another family, whom I barely know, but love so deeply, greater than my heart could ever reach, and it is only more suffering. I know no peace, here, there, or anywhere; there is not a single place in my life I know peace; no matter how much I try to cultivate a space for myself and my being, eventually, when I let someone in, they destroy it, not all at once, well, maybe sometimes, but usually bit by bit, and it hurts me so much to have to live this way. Am I better off alone? Maybe? For a little while, but for a whole life? I don’t know. Then maybe I am better off not being here, but again, this is the battle, the battle that I have been fighting my whole life, and I don’t know how much longer I can keep fighting. So, I’ll take off my gloves, and lay down my arms… I am no longer fighting.
Michael stumbles into the apartment, stench of alcohol oozing like bad perfume. Bottle in hand, lying on his bed, staring up at the ceiling, he only begins to realize that he is crying when he feels a cold stream trickle down the side of his face from the corners of his eyes. Belle. This is a decision he must make, the inevitable choice, but it is his. He sees her face every time he closes his eyes; her visage haunts him like a specter, a reoccurring dream. He cannot keep his eyes open, but he does not want to close them. He does not want to see her face; he wants to feel her; her skin, her touch, her breath. This insurmountable pain as though something inside him is dying. It is. It already has. And he must bury it. The stream of tears is now a deluge down his face. He lies on the bed, paraplegic. Belle. Belle. Belle. Her name echoes in his head until he falls asleep.
“Who’s there?”
“It’s me.”
“I said who is it?”
“It’s me, open up!”
“Michael!” Belle stands in front of the door, her sweet face an expression of surprise.
“Why are you here?” she says as he walks past her into the living room and takes off his coat.
“I had to see you.” She closes her front door and takes heavy steps toward him, her face looking down at the ground. “Please, don’t go…”
“We’ve already had this conversation, Michael.”
“Please, Belle. It doesn’t have to end this way. You can’t expect me to be okay with this. Imagine you were in my shoes.”
“Well, that’s something you’re gonna have to come to terms with. This is me, okay? I’m not going to change.”
“Change? I’m not asking you to change. My life changed when I met you. You made me forget. You made the pain go away. I’ve never felt about anyone the way I feel about you. And I know I never, ever will again. But…”
“But what?” Belle intercedes. “What happens after? Are we gonna get married? Are you going to stay? Here? For me? Or go back to London? You didn’t come here for me, Michael, you came here for you. This was never going to work.”
“It’s not over. I know you need the money, but it’ll be okay, we’ll sort something out.”
“Aargh,” she groans, raising her hands to her head, “why won’t you listen?!”
“Look”—he reaches into his side pocket—“one, two, three, four… just… here”—he holds it out to her—“a thousand dollars.”
Her mouth hangs wide open.
“Take it.” He gives the money to her. “And here’s an extra hundred, for that fine.”
Belle weeps. She sits on the sofa with her head in her palms. He looks at her and wishes he could collect each tear and turn it into a diamond, then give them all back to her. To see her happy through all the pain she has lived through is worth more than all the riches in the world. Michael places his arms around her. “It’s okay,” he says, stroking the baby hairs on her forehead, “it’ll be okay.” She looks at him, her eyes a watery grave. He kisses her on her forehead.
“And Belle, I have been in love, it was with you.”
They sit, entwined in each other’s being, breathing in the same air, synchronized hearts beating. Everything is silent, even the city streets have been quieted, as if they too can feel what they feel in this room. Belle wipes her tears and stands up.
“I’m still going to go.”
“What?” Michael erupts.
“I can’t take your money. I can’t do it.” She holds out the money in front of him.
“What do you mean?” He gets up and grips her by the shoulders. “Belle! Why are you doing this?” She stares right through him, her eyes a vacant room.
“Because I have to, Michael. I can’t take your money.”
“Don’t worry about the money, it doesn’t matter!”
“It does! I can’t take it. I can’t.” She continues repeating herself, holding the money out in front of her. He paces up and down the living room in a panic.
“Belle.” He calls her name, pleadingly. She remains silent and shakes her head side to side. Michael sits down on the floor, with his hands on his head. On his knees, he crawls to her, “Belle, please,” and wraps his arms around her, resting his head on her navel below her bosom; holding her, breathing her in, for a moment he knows is the last.
“Take your money,” she says, turning and facing him as he heads for the door.
“Please, keep it. It’s for you. I meant everything I said.” Michael opens the door and turns to look back at her. She lowers her hand. Her face is a blues song—a poem. He walks toward her and kisses her on the lips, feeling every tingling sensation for the last time.
“Goodbye, Belle.” He walks out and closes the door.
$100
“AAARGH!” Michael screams into the darkness.
“There’s only two things that could make a man sit outside in the cold and dark screaming”—a man’s voice, hoarse and croaky, emerges from the shadows—“money or women,” the man says, breaking into raucous laughter.
“How about both?” Michael replies, and looks over to see a man, with a pushcart, sit down next to him on the bench in the eerie park. The man’s clothes are worn and shabby, dark brown from the accumulated dirt, wrapped in layers and layers. His hair stands upright on his head, as if he is a cartoon caricature of someone who has been electrocuted. The man stretches and makes himself comfortable, somehow finding respite on this cold, hard bench.
“So, you not gon’ say?”
“Say what?”
“Say whatever’s got you sat out here in the dark hollering.”
“Well, I’m not the only one sat in the dark.”
The man chuckles heartily.
“I’d rather not say. I’m trying to forget.”
“It hurt that bad, huh?”
“I would rather eat a rubber tire.” Michael lets out a deep sigh and the cold air forms a mist before his face.
“It can’t be that bad; even I don’t wanna do that and I’m hungry all the time.”
“I’m tired. I’m just so tired. I want to lie down and fall asleep, for a long time, and hopefully never wake up.”
“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
“Huh?”
“You have to ask yourself why? Why did this happen? Ask yourself what is the meaning behind your suffering?”
“There is none. We’re born, we die, and in between, we suffer. That’s life, it happens.”
“Suffering must be given a voice, a platform from which to speak, it is then that suffering becomes art and, in turn, becomes truth.”
“I would prefer a life without suffering.”
“Show me a man who has not suffered, and I’ll show you a man who has not lived.”
“To live is to suffer. Nietzsche. I get it. I’ve read a little bit, seems you have too. But beyond your cute little Tumblr quotes and witty sayings, the world is fucked up. Somewhere in the world right now, there’s war, there are refugees, a child will die because they are starved, or someone out there is just lonely, miserable, depressed, suicidal. I mean, are you telling me that you would rather be out here on the streets than somewhere warm?”
“Ha! You think I still wouldn’t be suffering if I had a roof over my head?! Suffering is our shared language, our common bond. One of the two things that remind us, all of us, that we are acutely and intensely alive. That we are all the same. The other is love.” The man laughs hysterically and continues. “But suffering is also the thing we all deny and act like we’re not going through it. We are beings toward death, driving full speed to our demise.”
“Okay, you’re really not helping now.”
The man explodes with laughter.
“There’s actually something wrong with you,” Michael adds, scoffing.
“What, you thought I would be the homeless bum who gives you some profound epiphany and meaning to your life? You thought I’d give you hope? How romantic. The only reason you’re sitting in this place, heck, the only reason you’re talking to me is because right now, you’re a little closer to knowing what it feels like to be like me, to knowing what it feels like to not exist.”
“I want to not exist.”
“What?”
“I want to die.”
“You don’t want to die. You just want the hopelessness to end.”
The wind howls furiously. The dark void surrounding consumes them as if it is alive.
“It will end. It will end.” After a long, drawn-out silence, the man laughs again, loud and full-bellied, until the laughter turns into coughing and spluttering.
“What’s your name?” the man asks.
“Why? You won’t ever see me again.”
“You’re right about that.”
Frustrated and furious, Michael gets up to leave, having taken all he can of this man.
“Ay, man, you got a dollar? A man’s gotta eat,” the man says, looking up at Michael from the bench. Michael looks back down at the man.
“How about a hundred?” Michael then reaches into his pocket and holds out the bill in front of him.
“My man! It’s my lucky day.” The man reaches forward and grabs the money with his calloused fingertips, both hands in fingerless gloves. The man’s face opens into a smile, revealing teeth that are yellow and stained. He holds out his fist, Michael reaches forward, and they dap. The man folds back into a ball on the bench.
Michael’s sitting at the desk, in his room in the apartment, putting into an envelope the letter he has written to Mother for the last time. Tomorrow he will send it to her. He deletes everything of himself on the internet, all his social media, even though he stopped posting long ago. He checks his emails for the last time. Jalil. He opens the email.
Hey bro,
I’ve tried calling you for a while, your phone’s off? Anyway, sad news, man. Baba passed away. But, with God’s grace he got to witness my union before his return.
And I am pleased to show you me and my beautiful wife. I can’t wait until you guys meet. Love you bro, looking forward to hearing from you.
Jalil
P.S. You were right.
Michael opens the attached picture. Jalil and his wife—ring on their fourth fingers. The girl isn’t Aminah. Jalil is wearing a smart, fitted James Bond–style black suit, and she wears a sleek dress, off-white, fitted to her slender body. She is the kind of beauty that inspires poems. They look so good together, as if somehow, this is how it is all meant to be. It angers Michael; eyes glowing green in his reflection, questioning why life seems to go the right way for everyone else, apart from him. He slams his fist onto the table and starts to shake uncontrollably. He crawls into the bed shivering. He cries himself into a rageful, sorrowful sleep.
Michael feels peace, an odd kind of peace, the view of a sunset during a war. He sees the faces of the people he has deeply loved and cared for. He sees Mother. Father. He sees Jalil. He sees Belle, her face eternally engraved in his memory. An act such as this is prepared in the quiet of the heart. The war is finally over. The war has been won.
Deep in the middle of the night, Michael will wake. Resolved, he’ll put on his shoes, coat, hat, gloves, and head to the car he rented, gas tank full in preparation, for this, his final trip. He’ll drive the long silent stretching roads into the darkness to Harriman; to the woods and the wilderness, to the looming cliffs, the tall trees, the deep, sweeping waters, that it may all take him; that none may hear him, that none may see him. That his body may never be found.
I held on as long as I could, I’m sorry.
These hands simply grew tired of holding; this heart, tired of beating; these lungs, tired of breathing. This world was too unforgiving to me; but I was more unforgiving to myself; I hated myself more than anyone had ever loved me. But maybe, in the beyond, there is a joy greater than my sadness, a joy greater than all the pain that I have known. Life is a tender unraveling, an outpouring of self into the world. And I have no more of me left to give. So this is it, the final hour, the last mile. The road was long, but finally, here am I.