C is for Cookie

"You're trembling." She was right, I was. "Relax. There's no rush. I know you're fragile, right now. There's no shame in it." She just held me. "Nothing's going to happen that you're not ready for. Nothing you don't want, nothing you might regret later. Okay?"

"I... it's been so long. I haven't touched another woman for more than twenty years, I mean, before the other night with you. Even then... I mean, there were rules." I felt her nod. She was warm against my skin. I liked that. I liked it even better than the thought of sex. "I have an idea."

I led her to the edge of the bed, and pulled her down on top of me. I didn't kiss her. I rested her head against my chest and put her hand over my heart. I put my own hand between her breasts, feeling for her pulse.

"Tell me your story," I said.

She stiffened up and went perfectly still.

"You don't know what you're asking."

"Yes. Yes, I do. I think that for you... it's like you've got a lot of complicated walls up. You can have sex. You can love whoever you want. But real intimacy, the kind you've gotten me to share with you, that's harder. That's the part that gets affected by betrayal. I'm still very raw, but I'm guessing that you're not over your issues any more than I'm over mine. I kind of doubt that any of us ever are. Telling you my story helped me. I don't think you've told yours very often, or to very many people. If you want to help me, let me help you. Let me give you some of what you gave me the other night. I believe it will bring us closer, maybe help us both."

"Damn you for making sense. I'm the one who's supposed to be the psychologist."

"In your professional opinion, then. Am I close?"

"Yes. I'm afraid so." She shuddered. "Just... please just listen. Don't say anything while I'm talking, and try not to judge me. You're going to hear some things you're not going to be comfortable with. You shouldn't be. I'm not. You probably won't want to see me or talk to me again after I tell you. I'll be okay with that, if that's how it is, but I really hope it isn't. I really do like you, Dave. I really want to see you get over this heartbreak, I really do want to help. If you have to kick me out... I'll feel like I've let you down."

"Shh. It's okay. I let it out for you. It would mean the world if you could let it out for me."

"If only it were that simple. It's bad. It's really, really bad."

"I figured it would have to be. You've sworn off love."

"No. I've got plenty of love. I've sworn off relationships. Love is just a feeling. Deciding what to do with it is another thing."

I nodded. She could feel it. "That's what you said the day before yesterday."

"Well, you can believe it."

"I trust you, Cookie."

"Hm. Trust. That's the issue, isn't it? Love doesn't break so easily. Trust does, and it's damn near impossible to repair."

"Yeah. I got that thrown in my face."

"And I got shot."

I said nothing. I couldn't. What is there to say after that?

"Okay," she said after we'd achieved a dreamlike relaxation, her breathing in sync with mine. Then she let it out.

"His name was Justin. He was a beautiful man. He was six foot two with a slender build, pale skin, long, wavy, dark hair, and blue eyes a girl could get lost in. And man, did I ever. I loved him with my whole heart. I just knew, to the deepest depths of my soul, that this was My Man, and I was meant to be His Woman. The moment we met, we connected. It was like completing an electrical circuit. We didn't talk about it. We didn't even date. We were just a couple, joined at the loins, from that moment forward, and for all time.

"For the record, I was no virgin. I was twenty-five, single, and loving it. I'd had my share of men. Depending on who you ask, maybe even more than my share. I'd been with all kinds of guys. I'd even played around with a few girls, before I decided that wasn't for me. It turns out I don't have a physical type. I'm more interested in who they are inside.

"I'm drawn to complexity. Justin was a walking mess of contradictions, which is probably what made him so irresistible to me. His presence always filled the room, he had this amazing charisma, but he tended to be painfully shy, withdrawn, even introverted. He was supremely confident about some things, but deeply insecure about others. He knew he could attract women, but he never felt like he could keep one. And more than anything else, he was talented, but unfocused.

"I know it's trite, but he was a musician. I know, I know, every girl wants a rock-and-roll bad boy, right? Well, he wasn't just another jerk with an electric guitar and a mostly hypothetical band. He was a savant. If you put any kind of instrument in his hands, he'd fiddle with it for a few minutes and make it sound magical. There wasn't a string he couldn't pluck or bow and make you weep, a keyboard he couldn't dance his fingers across and fill you with joy, or even one single surface he could drum upon that wouldn't have your feet tapping and your head swaying to the great timeless rhythm that he could just... summon.

"And his voice! He had a voice like the tides. No one listening, man, woman, or child, could fail to be swept away. It was a voice for the ages. He was part of a band, they called themselves 'The Featherless Bipeds,' but there was a lot of conflict and drama. He was the one with all the real talent, but he was also the least businesslike of the four of them. The others were hardworking, dedicated, and more than musically competent, but they were the Doors and he was Jim Morrison, you know? It was a total cliché. The charismatic, wild, out-of-control frontman had all the energy, while the others were stuck doing all the work and hanging on for dear life.

"Bobby was the keyboard and bass guy, and he was basically their manager. He booked all their gigs and made all their deals. He had the band right on the verge of being signed. All the paperwork was in place, and the last thing to do was getting Justin to commit. Well, he wouldn't, or couldn't. He strung them along for months. It was infuriating. Justin had to go to rehab, or he had a side project to do, or he just wasn't feeling it. He'd disappear for days or weeks at a time. The demands of his art weighed heavily upon him, and no one understood.

"Eventually, the guys with the money got tired of waiting for Justin to get over his shit. They'd been willing to take a chance on the party circuit band that everyone talked about, but enough was enough, and they pulled the plug right at the exact moment Justin told the rest of the guys to go fuck themselves because they were nobodies who were just holding him back. The band broke up again for the last time, and Justin was free.

"We'd been together for almost three years at that point, which is a long time when you're that young. I was behind him one hundred percent of the way, whatever he wanted. If he'd stayed with Bobby and the guys, gotten signed, recorded that album and gone on tour, GREAT. I'd have been on board. If he'd wanted to form a new band or strike out as a solo artist, that would also have been great. If he'd wanted to travel to Outer Mongolia and live in a yurt so he could learn throat-singing, that would also have been amazing. I would have lived with him in a paper bag under a bridge somewhere, if that's what he wanted. As long as I had him, my world was complete.

"Unfortunately, Justin took his new sense of 'freedom' to an extreme. He wasn't just casting off the encumbrance of his band, he was casting off his entire life and identity, determined to start anew. That also meant getting rid of me. Now, tell me, Jim. Have you ever heard a song called 'Banks of the Ohio'?"

"I can't say that I have."

"It's a traditional Appalachian folk song. It's a tragedy. A man loves his woman so much that he can't stand the idea of ever losing her, for any reason. He asks her to marry him, but she says no, so he murders her and leaves her body by the river. That way she would always be 'his' and no one else's. Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds came out with a similar song that year, 'Where The Wild Roses Grow,' with Kylie Minogue. There's a whole gothic sub-genre of that shit. Murder Ballads. That was even the title of the album."

"Jesus."

"Yeah. My tragically depressed brooding artist emo boy allowed this idea into his head and decided that's what he had to do to make a clean break. He didn't just want to leave me- he wasn't willing to leave me behind, at all, as part of someone else's life. So, I had to die. He got a gun from somewhere, some shitty little Saturday night special called a 'Raven.' I guess that appealed to him. He came home to find me working on my second dissertation, as usual. When I got up to kiss him and hopefully fuck his brains out, he shot me, twice.

"The first one went into my chest, where I showed you. The entrance wound is tiny, it closed with just two stitches. He used a small caliber bullet. I didn't even know what happened. It didn't hurt at first, I was just confused by the noise. It 'coughed.' What kind of gun coughs instead of going 'bang'? Then I started to feel weak, or sick. I later learned that the upper part of my left lung had collapsed and I was bleeding internally. The bullet went between my third and fourth posterior ribs on the left side, an inch from my spine, leaving a nasty exit wound. That's where they went in to repair the damage. I have a nasty scar between my shoulder blades that's hidden by my tattoo."

"Is that why..."

"Yes and no. That's why I got the ink, but that's not what it means. I could have had them do any design to cover the scar. Other things might have worked better than the triquetra knot. So, I'm not going to count that as a guess, okay, because you didn't say what you think it signifies. That's just why it's there. Don't waste your guesses just yet. Not even now.

"The other shot grazed the side of my head, like you saw. It wasn't a bad injury, it just left that furrow in my scalp. I was lucky. Either shot could have killed me if it had hit just a little bit differently. The chest shot somehow didn't hit any major arteries or veins. If it had, I would have bled out in minutes. If the head shot had been angled just a little bit more inward, the bullet wouldn't have bounced off my skull and slid through my scalp, but gone through my temple and into my brain.

"I don't think Justin had ever even fired a gun before. He certainly didn't seem to know what he was doing, and honestly, he was kind of half-assing it, the way he half-assed everything that wasn't music. But I saw what he was trying to do, and the world became black-and-white. So cold. So senseless. So empty. Some instinct in me woke up. I knew this was fight-or-flight, kill-or-be-killed. That quickness that kept our ancestors from being eaten by saber-toothed tigers kicked in, and my hands were around Justin's throat.

"I SQUEEZED. And SQUEEZED. And SQUEEZED. He wasn't Justin anymore. He wasn't the man I loved, who I would do anything for, who I would give my life for. He was a Threat. He was the Enemy. It was him or me. I even forgot about the gun. At some point, he got off a third shot, but missed, and I never noticed. I had my elbows up in such a way that I blocked his wrist from pointing it at me, but I wasn't trying for that. I just needed better leverage to strangle the life out of him.

"It turns out that I'm much stronger than I look. I collapsed his windpipe and smashed his carotid arteries flat. His face was blue and his eyes and tongue were bugged out, but I couldn't even see it. I'd latched on and every last iota of my strength went into crushing the life out of him, even after he was down. Even after he was dead. That's how they found me. I was semi-conscious, bleeding out and choking on my own blood, with my hands still clamped around his neck. It took two paramedics to pry me loose.

"What I didn't know at the time was that he'd taken up with another woman. It wasn't the first time, either. I'd already forgiven him for that kind of thing twice before. He had her waiting out front in MY car, which they'd planned to run away together in. He had told her that he was going to 'get rid' of me, and then they were going to Canada. She'd already packed her stuff, and he'd already emptied out my bank account... not that there was much in it, I was a grad student. We didn't have much in the apartment, either, just some clothes and books, plus his instruments and amplifiers and things. She came upstairs because she was worried that he was taking too long, and maybe he'd changed his mind. She found us on the floor, dead and dying, then freaked out and called the cops. The funny thing is, she saved my life. If Justin hadn't been cheating and he'd come alone, I'd have died right there with him before we were discovered."

"She swore up and down that she had no idea he was going to try and kill me. She said she thought he was only going to dump me and maybe break my heart a little. They never charged her as an accessory or conspirator, and it helped her that she was the one who called them. They thought about going after me for manslaughter. They thought it might have been a heat-of-the-moment thing, provoked by his breaking up with me, cheating on me, and stealing my car and my money. Maybe I'd become enraged and he shot me in self-defense. But they eventually figured out that I didn't know about any of those things until after I woke up.

"On paper, Justin was kind of a shit. He had no real job, no fixed address, some petty crime, and few real friends. Most of the people who knew him had quickly found the limits of what they could put up with. Also, he'd been in trouble for drugs before, and he wasn't allowed to have the gun. He'd gotten it illegally. He was clearly coming to kill me, with premeditation. He was a big guy, and I was a tiny woman, in good standing in my graduate program and secure in my fellowship. The DA didn't think that any story which portrayed Justin as the victim would hold up in front of a jury. So they called it self-defense on my part and never charged me.

"And that, Dave, is the story of how, in the space of three seconds, I went from peacefully sitting at my desk with a pile of books to killing the man I loved with my bare hands."

I felt her tears on my chest. I hadn't heard them in her voice. I looked at her anew. She seemed far older, and wiser, and stronger than she looked a few seconds ago. She was no longer just a pretty girl with brains to spare, a sassy attitude, and the unusual hobby of heartmending. She was a woman who'd been put to the test and broken, but still standing. A warrior, forged in battle. There was more to her than I'd ever dared to imagine. Looking into her face was like looking into the depths of the sea. Somewhere in those depths was a broken person who'd never be whole again.

"I'm a monster. I'm a killer. I took a life. I would do it again if I had to."

"If you hadn't, we wouldn't be having this conversation."

"I know."

"You did what you had to."

"I know."

"You're a survivor."

"I know. But I'm never going to feel right about it."

I let that sit for a moment.

"I can. I'll feel right about it for you, if you'll let me."

***

We woke up like that, cuddled together, half-dressed. I don't know if it was the physical or the emotional exhaustion that had hit us, but I slept more soundly in her arms than I had in years.

"Good morning," she said. I hadn't realized she was awake.

"Good morning."

"Thank you, Dave. You were right. That was what I needed. I almost never tell that story." She shifted her weight to lay on her side, looking me in the eye. "So. You really don't think I'm some horrible kind of monster?"

"No. Of course not. Even if you were technically a monster, which you're not, you'd be a Cookie Monster. And he's not horrible. He's awesome."

She giggled deeply. "He's my favorite muppet. Ever since I was a toddler, I felt like he was always my friend. I had this kinship with him, partly because of our name, but also because he just... reaches out and seizes the joy in life. Without guilt, without shame, he's just exactly who he is, always enjoying the moment, perfectly at peace with himself. Without ego, without ambition, just... the experience of desire in conjunction with its fulfillment." She stared off into space. "You might say that Cookie Monster is my bodhisattva."

"Huh. I was trying to be cute, not profound."

She looked back at me.

"Why can't it be both? You can tell a simple joke and still have it be a huge emotional leap forward. See? But you're right, we don't need to make anything mean more than it is. Speaking of which..." She reached for my semi-turgid cock, from the outside of my pants. "I think somebody could use a blowjob."

"I.. uh..." Goddamnit, I was actually conflicted. And I was angry at myself for being conflicted. Angry in both directions. I guess that's why they call it 'conflicted.'

"Mmm. Nice." She was fondling my package and looking at my face. "But something's off. Why?"

"I.. I just... It's been a long time. With someone new, I mean. And I'm still actually married. I just, part of me... I don't know. I mean, two wrongs don't make a right."

"Nope. That's not it. You're not lying, but you haven't gotten to the root of it." She tugged gently on my 'root,' making a silly joke while still having a serious conversation and proving her point. "You're worried. You're scared. You're making it mean something. What is it?"

I drew in a breath.

"I'm scared it really means the end of my marriage. All the stuff I've been doing, moving her things, our bank accounts... It's just... activity. It's busy work. Nothing that can't be undone. I'm scared that I would be just as bad as she is if I let this happen. I don't want to give her cause. I don't want her to feel legitimate about what she did."

"Okay. Good. Now that you've said it out loud, how do you feel about that? Are you correct about any of it?"

"No. Actually, none of that holds up."

"Would Stephanie have any reason to feel slighted if you got a little somethin-somethin of your own, while she was off screwing her brains out on a romantic getaway with her boyfriend that she's been sneaking around with for years?"

"No. Hell no."

"Good. What else?"

"I... God. I can't even... why? Why are you doing this?"

"I've told you."

"I know. And I appreciate it, I really do. I just.. "

"Aha. There it is. You don't want my charity. You don't want pity."

"I didn't say that."

"No, but it was in your head."

"I guess."

"Okay. You're wrong about that, too. Look at me."

"I am."

"No, LOOK. Really look at me. Look at my eyes."

We locked our gazes. Time did that mooshy thing again. The past, the present, and the future all became part of one landscape, lit up by drops of light reflected in every facet of her sparkling, hypnotic gaze.

"Does this look like charity? Does this look like pity?"

"No."

"Good. Because it's not. It's desire. It's appreciation. It's respect. I love you, Dave. Let me do this for you. Let me do it because I want to. Let me do it because it's the right thing to do and the right time for it."

"Okay." Did I say that?

"Goody!" She lit up all over again, and that was the last time I saw her face before she dove into my crotch and showed me how to experience strange new kingdoms of pleasure in other dimensions.

God help me, I think she actually might have said "OM NOM NOM NOM NOM."

***

I fed Cookie some token breakfast, coffee and toast, and she went on with her day, making me promise to call her that evening and plan for Stephanie's return. I spent a few hours packing up more things, and I discovered that my new bank accounts were active, so I moved some money and scheduled payments around. Mostly, I was just piddling around while I was avoiding deeper and more important questions.