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You straighten up over the spy who cranes his neck and face to your waiting hand. Old hair wax, body spray, layers of today's dried down sweat on top of three days ago, dank and earth clinging to him, waft up to your nose.
He's old enough that his raised eyebrows have written his habits of anxiety, confusion and worry over his face, and the crinkles show when he smiles. He perches on the tub rim, wobbly, off balance. Does he want the touch or is he simply vain enough not to want a scab?
"How did you know? " he asks.
You looked back.
You startled.
You did a double take with that ridiculous cup in your mouth, a colt with a muzzle in middle of the sidewalk.
A tourist gawking like he's never lived in a city. Taking a picture so it'll last longer.
Vain man full of ten dollar words, skittish for show. Wide-eyed, credulous, glittering eyes. You coax him forward, gentling him. He could take a carrot or a bit.
He's hot to the touch, all those layers of skin, little blood vessels, and capillaries knitting themselves together under your thumb, like alfalfa sprouts in the dark looking for the sun. Soaking up your blood.
He tastes like iron and sedatives, a horse on tranquilizers, an artificially slow heart. Tugging his forelock up, bending over to check his forehead in the mirror. To stare at you, to look over his shoulder without facing you.
You feed him his reasoning. He spends so much time ignoring or skimming other people's thoughts he hasn't thought many of his own. It all washes over him in the moment and as soon as he washes himself clean. The least curious unobservant spy. Asks no questions.
He doesn’t listen with his brain or his ears. Every thought, whether it's his or others, turns sluggish when he has to connect them in his mind, moving through porridge. Please, sir, I want some more....
Your spoon clacks the bottom of the bowl.
You feel him poking into your skull later that night.
Fancy orphan. Poor little rich boy in shoes and a winter coat you bought him, telling tales on someone else's dime, his whole life paid for, shuttling between a series of climate controlled rooms. He's never patched his shoes with plastic bags and newsprint, or felt the wind blow sideways through his wet clothes, sinking in freezing mud.
All of his shoes stick to the floor with the blood of others. His soft hands & pretty face stay clean, even as he tracks blood & guts into the car. He's never responsible.
The bloody hands and teeth belong to someone else. You. Even when you're not responsible. Even when you are innocent. Even when you are a child. Funny how that works.
You hear whimpers. Squishing. Eyes downcast in a blood splattered face. The quiet clinking of chains, the rattling of teeth against iron.
They are not his.
They are not yours.
Good thing you don't need to breathe. Good thing you got there before things went south. Too bad you were too late.
You are so far away and it was long ago and it's tonight & and all over you. The slow rattling breaths, the pleas, stifled muffled screams, soaking the grass, your feet, the carpet.
The car stench sticks to the roof of your mouth. Your tone is easy and light as you click your tongue and he denies knowing that anyone cares about him.
Soft. Escapist.
Teeth clattering. Protests like a pianola. Helen answering the gift of her music box with a person sized one. Bait.
" I don't want to die. "
People without death wishes don't almost walk off buildings. Or waltz in like a tin baron demanding to see the man in charge. They don't wonder if fangs feel the same as needles in arms or sinking into someone else's memory, carried away on a galloping horse. Or if you can taste air bubbles along with grief, the bliss of oblivion, hitting the back of your throat, syrup burning all the way down. Running his tongue over in the oozing wound, pushing at the stitches, as if your teeth are in his head, tracing the absence. The novelty.
He'd lick the blood from your fingers and swallow, without understanding any of it.
What you would give just to lay your head in a lap again while being lulled to sleep he wouldn't even pick up to toss in a ditch.
He doesn’t have the conviction of his own loss. It's a hollow pretext to set himself against as a better person, worthy of wealth & comfort, in grievance, whether for suits or spooks.
Even his denial is a luxury. What's a dirt hole but a more economical way to muffle every thought and feeling around you? He holds a shovel like he's never seen one in his life. His nails are too clean.
He's never dealt with a person sized hole, shallow or six feet deep, while he's inside it, while it's inside him. He's never had to fill it or dig his way out. To lay someone to rest.
He cries and yells about being a tool, being used.
Tools are useful. Tools have a purpose. He has neither.
Dig.