Red Leaves. Paullina Simons

asking you. Please.’

      ‘Albert, no. You, please. You have Conni, remember?’

      ‘I’ll work it out. Maybe I’ll pick a big fight.’

      ‘I don’t believe you,’ she said. Crouching in front of him, still naked, Kristina whispered, ‘Albert, please. I want to stop.’

      He looked her over. ‘You’re naked.’

      She got up and backed away from him. ‘I mean it.’

      ‘Let’s go to Canada and then you’ll tell me if you mean it.’ He smiled sexily.

      ‘No. I’m serious. I’ve had enough. I want us to be done. Okay?’

      Kristina wasn’t smiling, and Albert stopped smiling.

      ‘You’re still naked,’ he repeated.

      ‘Clothes aren’t the problem, Albert. I can get dressed.’

      ‘Please,’ he said coldly.

      ‘The problem is us. We. We’ve got to stop.’ She looked away from him. ‘I want us to get over each other.’ She coughed, causing severe pain to her head. ‘I want to get over you. I want you to go with Conni to Long Island, and I don’t want to think about it anymore. I don’t want to lie, I don’t want to sneak around, I don’t want to worry about Howard. Or anybody.’

      When he sat there impassively, Kristina said, ‘We’re not meant to be together.’

      ‘You’re wrong.’ His tone was flat. He could’ve been saying, ‘You’re right.’

      ‘We were never meant to be together,’ Kristina said firmly, knowing she didn’t sound firm, knowing she couldn’t shield herself from his eyes. She was stuck in front of him with nowhere to go.

      ‘You’re wrong,’ Albert repeated, in the same tone.

      Kristina continued, undaunted, ‘Never. We screwed up real bad, but there’s still time to have a life - good lives. Don’t you want one? Conni loves you so much.’

      ‘I know. So? Jim loves you so much.’ He sounded bitter.

      Shaking her head, Kristina said, ‘No, he doesn’t. No, he doesn’t. Not the way Conni loves you. And you know that.’

      Albert got up out of his chair and stood, loomed, before her. ‘Kristina, this is absurd. I cannot not have you in my life.’

      She rubbed her face with her good hand, but it was more like closing her eyes at the sight of him. ‘Albert - please. We can’t. We can’t continue.’

      ‘You’re wrong.’

      She sighed deeply and then groaned from pain. She wasn’t wrong, she was just so tired of standing, of being naked, of this conversation falling again on his deaf ears.

      There was a knock on the door. Albert looked at Kristina and sat back down in the armchair. Kristina looked at Albert. Aristotle barked once and started to wag his tail.

      ‘Hold on!’ Kristina said loudly.

      ‘Kristina?’ The door opened a notch. It was Jim.

      ‘Jim, hold on!’ Kristina repeated, throwing some clothes on.

      ‘Is everything okay?’

      Jim couldn’t see her, for she was behind the door and out of his line of vision, but she knew he could see Albert sitting in her chair. Thank God he wasn’t sitting on her unmade bed. Aristotle ran to the door, and his behind started to move from side to side just like his tail.

      ‘I’m fine,’ Kristina said. ‘Come in.’

      Jim came in, looking at them suspiciously. But Kristina knew Jim wouldn’t act on an emotional impulse; he didn’t trust emotional impulses. Jim glanced at Albert,.then at Kristina again. She was wearing her pink tank top and a pair of pull-on Dartmouth green shorts. At first his gaze was hard, but then he saw her face. Kristina knew she was a sight. There was a bloody gash where the glass had been, and her eyes had a glazed look that she knew was from alcohol. Jim could easily have mistaken the look for signs of concussion. Her tank-top collar was dark with dried blood.

      ‘God, what happened to you?’ Jim said, giving Albert a stare that made Kristina suspect Jim thought Albert had beaten her.

      ‘Nothing,’ she answered, touching her face. ‘I was in an accident. My car crashed. Everything’s okay. I’m fine.’

      ‘You look terrible.’

      She felt terrible. The alcohol was wearing off.

      ‘I feel pretty good,’ she said, trying to smile.

      ‘Did you go to the hospital?’

      Kristina remembered clambering up the hard ground, just to avoid going to the hospital. ‘No, I felt okay, so I came home.’

      Jim became agitated. ‘You felt okay so you came home?’

      Kissing Jim on the cheek, Kristina said in her nicest voice, ‘I’m okay, Jimbo.’ But her arm, swollen by her side, betrayed her. She tried to move it to show him, and failed. ‘Really,’ she said. ‘I’m fine.’

      Albert got up. ‘I’d better go and see how Conni’s doing.’

      ‘She’s okay,’ Jim said, not looking at Albert. ‘She’s waiting for us. Maybe we should all go down.’

      Kristina managed a pasty smile. ‘Why don’t you two go on ahead? I’ll be right down.’

      Albert didn’t say anything, nor look her way; he just walked out of the room, taking Aristotle with him. Jim looked at her accusingly for a second and said, ‘Yeah, fine,’ and then left, too.

      Kristina waited a few seconds to make sure they were way down the hall and couldn’t hear her before she locked the door and collapsed on the bed.

      She lay there for what seemed like hours. Her eyes were opening and closing and she was looking at the lightbulb burning in the middle of her ceiling and wishing it would shut itself off, so the room could be dark, dark like it was in the car, in the middle of nowhere, when she thought she was dead. Now as she lay on her bed, she wondered why God had spared her, why he had spared her certain death in a collision of such suddenness.

      It was the closest she had come to death. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse had come to her, looked into her face, and galloped away. It wasn’t the first time she had seen them. When she was twelve, she had fallen off a wall into cold water. She was a good swimmer, but fear paralyzed her. She couldn’t move her arms or legs, couldn’t even scream for help. She just went down without a fight, gulping for air and feeling her lungs fill with water.

      And last year she had seen them again on her bridge, when she tumbled down to what she was sure was certain death. She had survived that too, but lived her life prepared at any moment to meet God, adding up the tally of her life every time it snowed, and she, drunk beyond reason, praying under her breath, walked the ledge on the bridge, her hands outstretched.

      She didn’t want to die. However, most of all, she was scared that it wouldn’t be God’s face she would see upon meeting her master. ‘I have only one master on earth,’ she whispered, ‘and I’m trying to exorcise him from my life because he’s no good for me, but he won’t let me, he’s stronger than me, and he won’t let me leave him.’

      She opened her eyes and touched the temple that had had the piece of tempered glass wedged in it. I feel pain, she thought. Do dead people feel pain? Do they feel tenderness, anger, regret? Profound regret?

      Do they feel love? A love more overwhelming than summer air?

      I’m alive, Kristina thought, because I still feel pain. ‘I’m not ready to die,’ she whispered. ‘I’m not done living, I don’t want to die…’

      I need a drink. I need another, and another and another.