Come on Skinny Love - Angely Mercado (classic novels to read txt) 📗

against her. I smacked it out of her hand. She picked it up and I lunged for the little plastic keepsake. We tugged on it until she let go and I stumbled backwards over the corner of the bed and came to a halt after I slammed my shoulder into a wall.

“Why the hell do you even want that thing?  You yelled at me for making you go to Coney Island. I bought it, too. It’s not like it means anything to you.”

“I just want to keep the damn thing, why does it matter if you bought it or no?” she said through gritted teeth.

“Because I want it, you didn’t even like the damned thing. You didn’t even want to take the picture. It’s not like you care about memories with me, I literally paid you to stick around.”

Her cheek twitched again. I was definitely being decapitated in her head.

“Why does it matter if you bought me anything or not?” she repeated. “It’s not like you’ve purchased me.”

“Yes I did.”

Her mouth hung open, and the weirdo I am, I stared at her lips and wondered if a stream of spit would come down if she kept her mouth like that long enough.

“What did you just say?”

“I did buy you; you sold yourself to me, isn’t that how it works?” I shot back.

            My conversation with the bat was looking better and better when I noticed Ivelisse blink several times. I didn’t know if I should have interpreted that it was caused by holding back tears, or just the shock of anger that was currently coursing through her veins. I always told myself that despite the hints of objectification that I’ve always laughed at in jokes, or noticed in movies or television shows, I thought that I was all for treating men and women equal. That and my Feminist literature in undergrad was no joke. Thanks to classes like that, I figured that I’d always find a way to make it work with the ladies. But I guess that wasn’t the case tonight.

            “So I’m something you bought.”

            She didn’t yell. I wanted her to yell, she had every right to tear me a new one at that point.

            “I didn’t mean it that way.” I tried to reach out and offer the souvenir.

            Ivelisse stared at it and then sighed, glanced at the door and then at her feet. She looked small. It’s not as if she’s very tall, but she suddenly became little.

            “I actually had fun that day,” she told her feet. “It was the first time I had ever gone there, and I thought that maybe you were one of the few guys who didn’t see me as something that came with ownership.”

            “Ive, how the hell was I supposed to think about this whole thing? You sold yourself to me.”

            I wished I was a smooth talker.

            “You didn’t have to spend the night with me,” she told her feet again. “You could have just said no.”

            “You threw yourself at me, what the hell was I supposed to do?” I tried to reach out to her. And then you started playing hard to get despite everything you do for money.”

            Her eyes met mine in a blank stare, and a muscle on her right cheek twitched. Somewhere inside Ivelisse’s mind, my toes were being snipped off one by one with a rusty pair of garden shears. She gazed at her feet again. I practically jumped out of my skin when her shoulders started shaking. Ive was laughing.

            “Oh, I see, it was my fault,” she chuckled, “after I left that first time and you went out of your way to go find me again.”

            She giggled her way to the night table and threw the remainder of her things into a bag. Ive turned to me and wiped tears of mirth from her cheeks.

            “I guess it’s my fault that I try to keep some sort of boundaries and control while I do this, you all act like going to bed with someone for money is easy.”

            “It’s not like you complained whenever I paid you or bought you dinner.” I wanted to take those words back right after I spit them out into the air.

            Ive’s knuckles practically turned white as she clutched her bag.

            “I see,” she straightened herself up, grabbed her bag and proceeded to leave my room. I trailed her.

            “You know I didn’t mean it like that, you don’t have to leave,” I begged.

            “Whether I stay or leave, it won’t make a differenc. I mean you paid me, you can easily pay someone else to spend the night with,” she smirked.

            Her hand reached out for the neck of my bottle of rum.

            I stood at the door and heard her feet patter down the stairs and out the front steps.

***

            There was a knock on my door. I opened it.

            “Good evening sir, sorry to interrupt you,” said the police officer.

            His badge said Abreu. I didn’t want to look at his face.

            I asked him if he needed my assistance for anything.

            “Actually there’s something I would like your assistance with. There’s an intoxicated woman on the roof of this building, she says that she knows the person in this apartment.”

            What’s her name.

            “She said her name was Ivelisse. Do you know her sir?”

            “I know her, I think. She was almost my girlfriend,” I told the cop.

            “I’m going to have to ask you to come up to the roof.”

           

***

            She stood on the ledge and danced. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Her limbs, the legs, the feet that were a little bit too big, yet slender. The dark hair, the dark eyes. The kind of tan that didn’t need lotions or lights. Perfectly imperfect. Lord have mercy.

            Ive, Ivelisse, Ive, Ivelisse.

            She was wearing the black dress, the one she had on when I met her, back when I was in a desperate drunken spiral of thoughts, unsure of where my life was going, and unsure of where I could purchase warmth and heat.

            Get off the edge.

            “I can’t, it’s like we always dance on the edge, funny how that works out isn’t it,” she laughed.

            Please please please, get off the edge.

            “Dance with me,” her hands reached out to me.

            I can’t, get off the edge and I’ll dance with you forever.

            “And I told you to be patient, and I told you to be kind,”

            And I told you to be balanced and I told you to be fine, and if all your love is wasted, then who the hell was I?

            “And I’ll be holding all the tickets, and you’ll be owning all the fines,” she spiraled even closer to the ledge.

            The cops were in a frenzy. They called for backup, some tried to negotiate, but the cop that spoke to me asked me to get her away from the ledge. They inched closer. I wondered if they had a group of people down on the street with a net or a trampoline in case she jumped. Please God, don’t let her jump. Lord. Have. Mercy.

            “Well, was it a waste for you?”

            No.

            “I swore that I didn’t like you, but then again, I liked you. I liked you too much.”

            I like you too. No. I love you. Now get off the edge.

            “I can’t”.

            Yes you can. Please.

            “No, you don’t know what it’s like, you love me and you still see me as something that you own,” she laughed, “my my my, my my my, my , my”.

            Get off the edge and I’ll never own you, not ever. You belong to yourself. And I belong to you. You’re my skinny love.

            “I’m not anyone’s love. Not then, not now, not ever,” she laughed again and took a swig from the Bacardi bottle, the bat didn’t give any advice this time. “Funny how that works isn’t it, isn’t it funny?”

            It’s hilarious, now please, please, please get off the edge. Please.

            “I can’t, I want to, but I can’t”.

            Our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Get her the fuck off the edge.

            “You shouldn’t pray and swear, He doesn’t like that, but then again, I don’t know if He likes me,” she moved farther away from me.

            The cops were now trying their negotiation tactics. They urged me to make her stop dancing, a few more spins and she’d fall. She’d fall and break. Get her off the edge, they begged, they pleaded.

            Get off the edge. I’ll dance with you forever if you do. I’ll learn bachata. I swear.

            “You won’t learn, they all swore that they’d learn, that they’d love me, where are they now?”

            I’m here. Come on skinny love lets last the year.

            “I’m not your skinny love; I’m not anyone’s love,” she spun once. She spun twice.

            In the movies, whenever someone is going to jump off a building or try to commit suicide, there’s always a net, or some sort of smooth talker, or one of those blow up mattresses. Where the hell was all that crap when I needed it.

            “We can help you,” the cops promised.

            She spun one more time.

            “I tell my love to wreck it all, cut out all the ropes and let me fall, my my my my my my my my, right at this moment, this order’s tall,” she took another gulp from the bottle. The bat refused to speak.           

            Please don’t fall.

            “You have to sing the rest,” she giggled, whipping rum from her chin.

            The lights from the cop cars down on the street illuminated the side of the buildings. Had anyone been standing blocks away, or just looking down on this part of Astoria, they’d have thought that a carnival was going on. Every time Ivelisse spun, she was lit up, silhouetted by the lights like the figure of Mary in a church. Triumphant, yet always gracefully mourning and rejoicing all at once.

            “Sing,” she commanded.

            And I told you to be patient, and I told you to be kind, and I told you to be balanced and I told you to be fine, and in the morning I’ll be with you, but it’ll be a different kind, and I’ll be holding all the tickets and you’ll be owning all the fines. But that’s not true. I’ll be with you in the morning, if you want me to.

            “No you won’t.”

            She spun. It was my favorite spin, probably because she had her arms out, and her right leg up, almost like a ballerina. It was probably because she was right at the edge, and the lights made her all red and blue, and because the dress clung to her tights when she spun and I had a better view of the outline of her legs. Lord have mercy.

            Ivelisse spun as she fell. Movies make it seem like people plummet in a noisy downward spiral. She just quietly disappeared off the edge and into the lights. The cops were on me soon after, they didn’t let me go to the lights. They patted, caressed, pressed, and pushed up against me. I crawled forward and finally clung to the edge, looked down and asked myself again why no one had bothered to set up a net. I looked up, then down again.

            Ivelisse lay on the sidewalk. She was broken. And so was I.