Re: Motel 77: Cris & Sam
Cris hadn't wanted to get into it in the cab, to carry the fragile thread of webbed words up through the lobby, in the elevator and beyond. It hadn't occurred to him that it would be taken bad, but he wasn't thinking that good—he was focusing on keeping stuff together 'til they got behind that door, and for a minute, for two minutes, that eclipsed his devotion to Sam, 'cause in the long-run, she'd be better served that way. Or so he thought.—He realized his mistake when she got so quiet in his arms, it was a dearth, a lack worse than anything he felt in that lighthouse, but it was too late to bother breaking it. Up the shafta elevator and into the room, and he stood, wet in arterial shirt and jeans so dark they looked black, and he watched the girl move dreamy through the brighter space, spinning away from his touch like a moonbeam'd moth no longer in love with light.—She was pale, blancheda any color, any kinda life she normally had in cheeks, just blue-veined, purple-busted, and red-eyed as she seemed to wander, turning the TV on loud, and going to the window that opened the city up below them, too big to fit in the palma your hand, but too small to feel like you were a parta it from here.
He took off his shirt, the air in the room leaching it cold. He removed his gun, his belt, his shoes, and he listened to Sam's voice carry in dulled English back to him through the late-night Spanish. And when he'd done alla that, he walked to her, shaking his head, milky dropletsa cold shower water sliding down the backa his neck, between shoulder muscles and down the laddera his spine like fingersa death reaching for his heart and missing.
"Hey." He tucked his nose to the sidea her skull, hair matted close to it, and he came up behind Sam, putting his hands on her as he always did, low to her waist, bringing her into the cleavea heavy, dark arms. "Mami, you know who you're talkin' to? Look—" He showed her his knuckles, the ones pulverized to hamburger, ribboned in reflection, and covered with a non-dominant's hand lesser skill in antiseptic white, and he twisted his hand at the wrist until his palm showed, where the tape met on lifelines. "I shouldn'tna done it either. But you don't gotta apologize to me." He didn't voice his opinion that the redhead deserved it. That he was so conflicted insidea himself, in ugly tanglea guts, over the desire in him that bubbled up hot and metallic to see violence done to her, and his own morals that made him sick at the prospect.
Cris swallowed hard, audible.
"You're not what she said, just 'cause she said it." The guy stood at Sam's back, his stomach to her spine, his chest, and he let his touch spray upward in star-blow of fingers, up her throat, to her jaw, his skin warm on hers. He pressed back on the bone that, to get her to put her head back against his shoulder and look up. "Dirty little drug addict. That's not you, baby." Black lashes low, he stared at the girl, 'cause he couldn't offer her much right now. Not as much as he wanted to be able to. He could be solid, but he wasn't sure that was what she needed most. "I don't think you were wrong," he admitted without husha confessional. "I think she's onea the most selfish people I ever met, and I think sometimes, there's no other way to get through to 'em." Like his padre. "Maybe that's messed up, but it's messed up to act like they do. It's messed up to go get drunk when you're with a recovering alcoholic.—That gringa, she likes people to think she's somethin' she's not. A victim. But, prometo, no one sees her that way but herself, mami. You didn't make nothin' worse." He took a deep breath. "If it'd been me, I prolly wouldn'tna stopped hittin' her, huh?"