Return of the Knife (Nothing Ever Goes Away)

Deelya was lying on the bed. I was on the floor. The carpet was starting to itch me a little, but I was too lethargic to move.

“I’m nervous, T,” Deelya said.

“‘Bout what, beautiful?”

“Soots doesn’t know about my past,” she said.

‘My past’ is one of those Jungle expressions that people used that always threw me. We all have a past. That’s what I thought.

“We all have a past, angel,” I said, flossing between my toes with my bathrobe tie, lifting my leg into the air.

“For sure. Straight dope,” she said. “But I’m scared he’ll break it off.”

“What for?” I can be a little slow.

“You know why,” Deelya says in a coy kind of way.

It barely catches my attention, so I lower my leg and look up at her face. She looks extra pretty in the light coming in through my window. Why do I always end up falling in love with everyone I know?

But that doesn’t happen then.

What happens then, is I go, “Wait, you haven’t told him about that?”

That was another thing that frustrated me about people. They kept all sorts of secrets, usually for no good reason. It made all kinds of problems.

“I mean, I think he knows we kissed. But not the other stuff.” Deelya bites her lower lip and pushes up her glasses.

There wasn’t that much more. Not at this point. “There isn’t that much more,” I say, you know, kind of insensitively. “And we were blasted.”

In hindsight, that probably hurt her feelings, but I didn’t see it then. Maybe you do, I don’t know. Make a perception check or something, if you’re even playing along anymore.

“Well, it’s not just us, though,” she says.

I didn’t know what that meant. “I don’t know what that means,” I said.

“I mean … I’ve been with other girls.”

That turned me on a little. “Really?”

“Oh yeah,” she said, then put her necklace in her mouth.

“Like how many?” I asked.

Deelya shrugged a little, making her coily hair bounce. “I dunno. Like a lot. Mostly.”

“Mostly?”

“Yeah,” she said.

“What does that mean?”

“Like most of the people I’ve been with,” she said.

I didn’t know that. “Oh,” I said. “I didn’t know that.” I raised my leg again, resumed pulling the bathrobe tie through my toes. I noticed my nail polish was, like, totally fucking slagged. “I gotta paint my fuckin’ nails today,” I said. “I need to shave my pussy, too.”

“Want some help?” Deelya said. I’m pretty sure she actually said that. But maybe I’m embellishing or conflating memories again.

Either way, I didn’t respond to it. I said, “So what do you want to do?”

“About what? The pussy shaving?”

“No, about Soots, dude.”

“Oh,” she said. “I don’t know. What do you think I should do?”

I thought she should break up with him cos he’s a douche. But I wasn’t going to say that.

“I know,” she said.

“Know what?” I asked.

“I should break up with him,” she said.

Did I say that outloud? I wondered.

She nodded, yes, that I had.

I grimaced a little. “Sorry.”

Deelya waved it away, then sat up. “But you dated him,” she said.

I mean, I fucked him, if that counts, but. “Yeah, and I don’t anymore.”

“Why did y’all break up?” she asked.

He sucked, I thought. But I don’t say that then. Instead, I said, “We just weren’t, you know, compatible or whatever.”

She grinned. “He wouldn’t let you top him, would he?”

He wouldn’t, but that wasn’t why. “Nah, it was just, like, you know … everything.” I gesture with both hands and the bathrobe tie falls limp against my bare thigh.

I’m reminded, then, of one night we were together. Me and Soots, I mean. Who I called the Soothinater. He hated that, but I was kind of a shit about things like that back then. Anyway, he’s just come inside of me, has pulled out, and is now fingering me.

“You came pretty hard,” he said.

I hadn’t. “I didn’t come, babe,” I said. “But, I mean, I’m open to it.”

He held up two fingers, both covered in come. He grinned. “I’ve got the proof.”

I looked at the jizz, then at him, then at it again. Then back to him. “That’s … you. You know that, right?”

The Soothinater looked a bit stunned, like ever so briefly taken aback, then laughed. “You’re a trip, T.”

I faux laughed, then said, “No, I’m serious, my man. That’s your stuff, not mine.”

He looks skeptical and a little hurt. “No, it’s not.”

I quickly put the fingers in my mouth and taste some of the come. I nod. “That is one hundred percent you, dude. Taste it.”

He recoils. “No!”

I shake my head and reach for a cigarette. “Whatever, man.”

I light up and look back up at Deelya. “He’s kind of a rube.”

She giggles and then crawls off the bed and gets next to me, puts two fingers out for the cigarette.

I pass it to her; she takes a drag, gives it back.

I can taste her on it, smell her next to m—sweet, but not overbearingly so. I want to kiss her, and I think she wants me to. But I don’t cheat, and I don’t participate in cheating, so.

“Ditch ‘im,” I say softly, through the smoke between us. “We’ll go bowling. Have some fun together.”

She smiles at me and says, “I should. I know I should.”

But she won’t. I know that because she didn’t. Not then, anyway. But I knew it even before she didn’t cos I’m perceptive. That’s what everyone kept telling me, anyway.

“You are,” she said.

“I am what?”

“Perceptive,” she says, then opens her mouth for a shotgun.

I look at the cig in my hand and see it’s a joint.

I shotgun the hit for her, then lay there trying to remember what I might have said. It didn’t matter. We were high—or about to be—and none of it would count.

“He makes me feel beautiful,” Deelya said. “And that’s important.”

I got that. I mean, being almost fucking fifty now, I really get it. And it reminded me of a few decades later, when Lila and I were out on the back porch.

“I’m feeling not great about all this,” Lila said.

“About me and Avan?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said.

“Is it me or Avan?” Then I quickly added: “Or both?”

“I mean, I love Avan,” she said. “It’s not that. And you guys are, I don’t know. It’s different somehow.”

I knew all this cos we’d discussed it before. So I really didn’t know what the problem was.

“I really don’t know what the problem is, then.” I took a drag. Wait. I wasn’t smoking then. Fuck. Just forget about that part.

“It’s not a problem,” she said. “It’s just a feeling.”

I got feelings. “Look,” I said. “It’s not, like, a completely romantic thing. He just makes me feel beautiful at a time in my life when I really need that.”

She nodded. “I get that. I need that, too.”

Something about the way she said that reminded me of way back on the Gold. So I would have been, fuck … like, twelve? Cos it wasn’t when I was still there; I’d gone back for a visit.

The Headmaster was a fucking dick about it, too. Have I told you this one before? Fuck it. Imma tell it once more.

So I go up to him to thank him for this thing he’d helped me with. It wasn’t quite girl gang shit, but it was on the edge.

“Who are you again?” he asked, then took a sip of punch.

“Tracy,” I said. “Tracy Anderson. I used to go here.”

“Used to?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “CoDex recently transferred my dad to Meezed Zedbee two, and I’m back for a visit.”

“This dance is only for current students,” he said, kind of swirling his punch glass around.

“Oh,” I said. “Should I leave?” Cos I was still a good girl then.

“Since you’re already here, you can stay,” he said. “But please don’t come back again.”

“Okay,” I said. “Well, thanks again.”

“Sure thing,” he said, then drank some more punch.

It didn’t matter, I told myself. He wasn’t why I was there; I was just trying to be nice.

I was there to see Delia.

Now, don’t get Delia and Deelya confused, m’kay? And don’t get up my ass about using too many characters or having names that are too similar. I will kick your ass right out of the book and not look back, you feel me?

I may be a little too high.

“You’re fine,” Deelya says, then takes a toke, leans in to shotgun me.

I take it, and then feel her tongue in my mouth.

And we’re back in the future, maybe five years? And we’re on a bed with clean white sheets, and I move from her mouth to her tits, and suck her nipples.  Then I lick down her belly to her bush and smell it, then I go down on her.

Delia smiles at me.

“I can’t believe you came back for me,” she says.

I look around the dance, take in the sights and sounds. “Yeah,” I say, trying to be a cool girl. “I came back.”

Colt pops their head in—like a straight up 80s movie lean-in, I shitchu not.

“Hey!” they say.

I’m still feeling burned over the way they didn’t reciprocate my feelings for them, so I am kind of cold when I say, “Hey.”

I can tell they feel it, and part of me wants that. I want to hurt them like they hurt me.

I see Colt has fancy gloves on. Like they went all out for this one. That hurt me. It all hurt me, all over again.

Who is Colt? you ask.

I kiss you, if you want that. Then I whisper, “I had to come again, and show you that I’m real.”

Then I push away from you, and start dancing across the floor, Delia’s hand in mine.

We fall into bed, fifteen years later or whenever it was. But it’s Deelya, not Delia. You got that, right? Of course you did. Smart as a whip.

And you watch as I lick between her legs, as her breasts heave, dark nipples hard. She grips her own hair with one hand and mine with the other. She smells amazing.

But then I’m with Culip and having to explain to her: “You’re gal is not smelling great, babe.”

“My gal?” she asked.

“Your pussy, sweetie. It stinks.”

She flushed. “Oh my god. Really?”

“Yeah. I mean, I don’t wanna make you self-conscious or anything …”

“Too late, T.” She puts down the magazine and goes into the bathroom, closes the door. We broke up later.

I roll onto my back, and she goes down on me. Whoever she is.

“I’m such a fucking idiot,” I say. “I think I’m following the river, but I’m just flailing around in a pool that I keep pissing in.”

Mitz stops blowing me and crawls up to look into my eyes. “What are you talking about, Teresa?”

I shake my head. “Nothing. It’s nothing. It’s just, sometimes when I'm falling …”

I break off and reach for my smokes, which I know Mitz hates. I mean, they’re allergic. It’s totally reasonable. But I’m a totally self-absorbed bitch who just smokes anyway.

“It doesn’t bother me,” Deelya said.

I’m not sure what she means. “What doesn’t?”

“The smell,” she said. “I mean, it happens to all of us sometimes. It’s just part of having a pussy.”

I nod slowly. “Right,” I say, then take another drag. I look at the smoke. “This is a cigarette, right?”

She giggles. “You’re so fucking cute,” she says and kisses my neck.

With my other hand, I slowly reach down and into my vagina, then pull it up and smell it. “Oh my god,” I say. “That’s pungent.”

Deelya giggles again and licks the side of my face. “We can do other stuff.” She hops up and goes to the bedside table, pulls out the strap.

“Hell yeah,” I say.

I spread my legs, and Mitz fills me with the dildo. They fuck me gently, like the way they like to fuck.

“I love you, babe,” I whisper sweetly.

“I love you, T,” Mitz says. Or maybe it was Deelya. Maybe both.

Who’s Mitz? you ask.

Don’t tell me Mitz is deep lore. You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. C’mon. Try to keep up.

“There’s no obligation now,” I say to Mitz. “We can just be free. To do something rash … I’m blinded by the lights …”

Mitz pants lightly in my ear as they pump away at me, the leather creaking some, making me hotter.

“I want you to come inside me,” I say to them.

They can’t, but we can pretend. I like to pretend.

“I’m drowning in the night,” I say to her. To them.

“Don’t leave me, T,” Deelya says.

Or was it Delia? Were we young again? And on the dance floor, electronic music filling the air like birds at night.

“I won’t,” I say, holding her waist as we sway back and forth, trying to dance together. “I’ll be here for you.”

I look then and see Mom and Dad standing there—ole Wil and Nina. Mom is crying.

The song ends. Delia and I hug, and then I say goodbye. She says goodbye.

I walk over to Mom and Dad.

“What’s wrong, Mom?” Cos it’s kina fucking embarrassing.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“For what?” Cos there was a lot to be sorry for.

“That we took you away.” She nodded toward Delia, who waved and smiled.

“It’s fine,” I say. It wasn’t fine. But what was I going to say? And what was I going to do? Stay light years away on another planet without my family?

Which of course I did, later. Don’t we all?

But there was something else I had to take care of. Something I’d forgotten about.

It was somewhere between the Headmaster Dickhead thing and Delia and I dancing.

Binnigin came up to me. Don’t worry about who Binnigin is. He doesn’t matter.

“Hey, man,” he says. “You’re back!”

“Yeah,” I say, trying to be a cool girl. “One night only.” I look around, like I’m looking at something, for someone. “You seen Delia?”

“Oh,” he said. “Yeah. Yeah, man, I’ve seen her. But she’s with Kaiji now.”

“What?”

I know I’ve told this before. I had to have. Maybe in We Can Never Go Back? It doesn’t matter. The line forms on the right.

Anyway, as I was saying … “What?”

“Yeah, after you left, they got together.”

Kaiji was a friend of mine. He was kind of my best friend right at the end there? We’d known each other for years, but we’d only become friends right at the end. Thing is, he really meant a lot to me. But instead of dealing with that, I pulled my knife.

“Whoa, shit!” Binnigin said. “Is that real?”

I wasn’t sure. “Just tell me where he is.”

Binnigin hopped to it and led me over to the lockers nearby. They had streamers and shit on them. The light of the disco ball reached out this far, bending around the locker doors.

Kaiji saw me, then the knife, and booked it.

I chased after him, following him through the crowd, shoving people to the right, hunting down the night, running down the dream of my best friend who wouldn’t get to be. Not for long.

Someone grabs my shoulder, and I turn to look at them.

It’s Bishop. You know, Shelly. Her wise old face says to me, “Not this, Teresa.”

And I immediately cry. I drop the knife.

“It’s not your gift, child. It’s just a window into your heart.”

I grip her legs, robed, strong, ancient. And I sob.

Mitz lifts me up, easing my chin to hers. To theirs. “Hey,” she says with a smile. “I thought I lost you for a minute.”

I look around. We’re at Camp O-Bag. I’m crying.

Just stay with it, T.

You just stay with it, I say. To whom? To you, I guess.

“C’mon, baby,” Mitz says, “Don’t cry.”

I wipe at my eyes and try not to. “I want to marry you,” I say. I can’t believe I said it, but I did.

Deelya smiled. “I want that, too.”

I’m wrapped around her in the bathtub, in our place together.

“And we should have kids, too,” I said.

Wait, where’s Mitz? Wasn’t it supposed to be her? Them, I mean.

Deelya says, “We should go see some comedy tonight.”

She has a very irritating way of saying the word ‘comedy.’ It’s almost like comb-ah-dee. It really annoys me.

“Sorry,” she says. “I won’t say it that way anymore.”

I didn’t mean to say it. I didn’t realize I had.

“You can only hear your pussy stinks so many times, T,” Culip says angrily.

“I know that,” I say. “I mean, my stinks, too. It’s not that big a deal.”

But I hadn’t said that then. I hadn’t because I didn’t have a pussy then. And because I wouldn’t have thought to. I would have been thoughtless. And selfish.

I rolled the handle of the knife, and the blade winked at me, like, “Hey, girl. How you doin’.”

“Please put the knife down, Teresa.”

I’m not sure who is talking to me, or why they are saying that to me.

So I look toward them, and it’s Norgen’s mother. Don’t worry about who Norgen is. Just some guy I knew. He’s not important.

“Teresa,” his mother said. “Look at me, Teresa.”

I am. “I am looking at you.”

“Please put the knife down.”

I look back at the knife. It winks at me again, saying, “Hey, girl. How you doin’.”

I grin at it. “I’m good, girl. How you?”

“Let’s have some fun,” she says.

I giggle.

“Teresa,” she said. “Look at me, Teresa.”

“I am looking at you.” I’m starting to get pissed now.

“Good,” she said. “That’s good. Just keep looking at me.”

I do, though I am glaring now.

“Good. That’s good. Now let go of his throat.”

What the fuck is she talking about?

I look down and see I have Norgen pinned under me and am choking him with one hand. His face is turning pretty purple.

I let go, and he laughs. What a fucking weirdo.

“Good,” she says. “Thank you, Teresa. Thank you for doing that. Now, can you put down the knife for me?”

I look at the knife in my other hand.

She winks at me, says, “You have such teeth, bae.”

I grin back at her and say, “Just like a jackknife, bae.”

We both laugh.

“I don’t know what you’re saying, Teresa, but can you please put down the knife?”

I look back at Norgen’s mother. “Lib. Your name is Lib.”

“Yes, that’s right,” Lib says. “I’m Lib. You’re Teresa. You’re here, on the Gold. You’re staying at our house while your parents are off-world. You know that, yes?”

I think so?

“Good,” Lib says. “That’s good, Teresa. Now can you please put the knife down?”

I look at the knife.

She winks at me, saying, “Choo, cha-choo, ugh … shall we start the scarlet billows? Such spread, tho!”

I laugh. “You’re silly.”

The knife laughs, too. “No, you’re silly!”

We laugh together.

“Just, please, Teresa. Put the knife down.” That isn’t Lib. That’s someone else. That’s the Men of Skin’s second leader, this dickbag named … oh, what the fuck was his name …

“I’ve got money. You know I do. I have more money than you could spend in thirty lifetimes.” His voice fucking razzes me.

“You think I give a shit about money?” I say. I mean, I would think that would be obvious, as my sales can attest, but.

“You want sales? I can do that for you. You’ll be an intergalactic bestseller overnight.”

I grinned at him. “You’re not talking your way out of this. You’re a piece of shit, and you’re gonna die tonight.”

The knife grinned in the moonlight.

He took a deep breath. “You’re gonna pay for this, Teresa. I have powerful friends. They will avenge me.”

I laughed and drug a black-painted nail down the edge of the blade, tickling it a little. “No one gives a shit about you, dude. You’re a fucking patsy. You’re a figurehead for a pathetic group of weak men who hate women and aliens.”

“That’s right!” he said. “I am. I’m not anybody. I’m nothing. And I’ll start over. I’ll move in with Malvina, and we’ll get married …”

The knife says, “Cut him.”

And I do. I slash him across the cheek.

The knife laughs.

“You’re never touching her again,” I said. “She’s done with you.”

“She loves me, Teresa. You know she does,” he says.

“Shut up,” I say. “Or I’ll cut your fucking tongue out.”

Lib is quiet and nods that she understands.

Wait, I think. I didn’t mean her. I meant him.

She looks like she wants to say something, but is scared to.

“Speak!” I shout so hard I shake.

“Okay!” she says. “Okay, Teresa. We can talk. I can talk about whatever you need to.”

I look around. “Where is he? Where’d he go?”

“He went into my room,” Lib says. “You said it would be all right for him to, remember?”

“Not your kid, dumbass,” I say. “Van. Where is he?”

“Van?” she asks.

“Yeah,” I say.

“Who’s Van?”

“A misogynistic piece of shit who is the frontman for this fascist piece of shit group called the Men of Skin.”

“I don’t know who that is,” Lib says. “I’m sorry, Teresa.”

That irritates me. “Sorry? What are you sorry for? He’s the piece of shit.”

“Who?” Van asks me. “Leader?”

“Leader’s dead, idiot,” I say. “I killed him. Just like I’m going to kill you.”

“You don’t have to do that, Teresa.”

“Oh, but I want to.”

“No, you don’t,” she says, but her voice reaches me this time. Through time, I mean. It reached me through time. It’s Bishop. You know, Shelly.

I drop the knife and start crying.

“Look out, child,” Shelly says. “Follow the river.”

I’m sobbing so hard it takes me a minute to speak. When I can, I say, “I thought … I thought I was!”

She stroked my hair, and says, “The rabbit’s on the run. You can’t be forever. You have to rest and let the river carry you.”

“I want to,” I say softly.

“I do, too,” Lila says to me.

“You do?” I ask.

She smiles. “Yeah, I do.”

We kiss, and I realize I’m home. I don’t know how I got there, how I made it. But I’m home.