Necromancy

[Clover]

Clutching the sheets to her chest, she slid her body up toward the headboard and watched her boyfriend gather the remainder of his clothes from the floor of their apartment. The breakup had not gone according to plan. One minute they were screaming at each other. The next minute they were throwing things into cardboard boxes. Somehow, they ended up against the bedroom wall, the kitchen counter--she tried to stop her thoughts from going through the remainder of the evening, but the way his *** looked in his ripped jeans just fed the vicious cycle.

“You’re really serious about this?” He tugged his black v-neck shirt over his head and went to collect his Toronto Argonauts clock radio. He had pulled it from the wall the night before and threw it across the room, shattering the base and cracking the face.

Brown eyes on the zebra print stretched across the cotton bedspread, Clover let the silence answer his question. She was serious. She was serious for the last time. They were hot. They were cold. She needed some stability in her life and he couldn’t do more than make empty promises. When she looked up from the bed, she met his intense gaze. Apparently, the silence hadn’t been answer enough.

“You know I love you.” She sighed when she spoke. Her head made solid contact with the headboard of the bed--the dull sound echoed off their four walls. The sunny yellow paint had transformed into a sickly yellow and she could only stare at the matching ceiling. Why had she gone with the yellow instead of the blue?

“Don’t give me that ****. I told you it was an accident. I had one too many and she came onto me, Clo. She came onto me. She’s always wanted me and you know it!” Zach had narrowed his eyes, looking at her as if she were the bad one in their dispute, as if she had made the mistake. When she kept her head upturned, he moved over to the closet and began ripping his clothes from the hangers, sending the metal holders clattering to the wood floor. He shoved shirt after shirt into his collection of cardboard boxes, unconcerned with the wrinkles or the fragile objects already packed into the bottom of his makeshift luggage.

“I’m not giving her a pass, Zach. Don’t make this about inequality,” Clover ground out. She finally let the covers drop from around her chest and made the first move to leave the security of the bed. She swung her legs over the side and stepped on one of his steel-toed boots, and then she stepped on the remnants of her laptop. “Jesus, Zach. Really?” She kicked his boots and then hissed in pain. Her toes hurt, but she felt better.

“Really.” He didn’t look at her before he replied.

Clover stepped over an overturned hamper and grabbed a shirt from the pile of clothes. She had worn it the day before, but she needed something to cover herself. When she saw a pair of sweats, she put those on as well. Mismatched clothing. Mismatched couple.

“One too many doesn’t excuse the fact that I saw her jacking you off in the club’s bathroom stall. You didn’t think enough to latch the door?” She tried keeping her arms at her side, tried to appear strong and independent, but she failed. She crossed her arms just under her breasts and stared him down. She burnt holes through his t-shirt and into his back.

“Not this again. You saw how wasted I was. What about how you were grinding on that drifter, huh? Are we going into petty ******** too? I’ve got a whole list, Clover. Bring it on.” He shoved the closet door closed, throwing it off track, and took a few steps toward her. He was tall, but not much taller than her five feet and ten inches. He looked down at her, but she met his gaze with a fierceness she didn’t know she possessed.

“This isn’t petty ********. I trusted you. Relationships require trust. So you know what? This relationship is over. It’s simple. Keep packing.” She had a lot more that she wanted to say, but she stepped around him and went right for the door. He stayed in the bedroom and she moved into the kitchen to grab a box of Frosted Flakes and a bottle of beer.

“I’m taking the ******* sheets too. I bought them. Sleep on the damn mattress.” The voice drowned out the sound of her crunching, so she turned on the television and cranked up the volume to the limits. Zach just shouted louder, making a duet with the sounds of the afternoon news. She heard him as he shouted out random items that he wanted and she saw him as he carried box after box to the apartment door, but she pretended that she saw and heard nothing. And then he took a seat next to her and snagged her abandoned box of Frosted Flakes.

Neither of them spoke, not until after the news gave way to soap operas. He took the remote control and lowered the volume until the actors and actresses became nothing more than mimes. Tucking her dark hair behind her eyes, she studied him from her peripherals. He seemed more interested in the cereal.

“You feel better now that you’ve made an *** of yourself?” She broke the silence and turned her head to look at him, but he just shrugged his shoulders in response. He seemed resigned to the fact that they were over and she suddenly felt a seed of doubt blossoming in the pit of her stomach. They had been together, on and off, for six years. They had made it through lies and cheating and pregnancy scares and a miscarriage. At one time, she thought they were going to spend the rest of their lives together.

“If I walk out that door, I’m not coming back. We can’t keep doing this back and forth, on-and-off ****. You want me or you don’t. And don’t put all this on me. We’ve been through worse.” Zach looked at her in a way she couldn’t quite describe, a way she couldn’t decipher. Had he grown overnight? Had she been looking for a reason to walk away? Maybe she was the one with the problem.

“We’re not about to have sex again, are we?” Clover cracked a partial smile and she saw that he wore the exact same smile. He had nice lips, softer than they looked. He had beautiful blue eyes. He had hands that were rough, but they made her feel so secure. She was cracking little by little and her smile slowly began to fade. “I hate when you look at me like that. I can’t--just let me think about it, okay? Go stay with Shawn or your cousin, Peter,” she blurted out, a groan following.

Nothing described the megawatt smile that spread across his lips. He tossed the box of cereal over his shoulder and took her into his arms, pressing kiss after kiss to her hair, her forehead, her cheeks, and her lips. Somehow, she ended up straddling him, and then they were right back in the bedroom, on the bare mattress.

When she opened her eyes again, she reached across the bed to feel the empty spot where Zach had been, but the mattress was cold and his bare pillow had no lingering impression from his head. She turned onto her other side and let her arm fall off the edge of the bed, her hand groping blindly for any sign of her cell phone. She pushed aside several articles of clothing, most of which were unidentifiable, and then her fingers met with the cool plastic cover of her touchscreen phone.

She had to scrounge up another shirt and a pair of panties, but her focus was on her phone. Spending another night in her apartment, trapped within the walls of her stuffy bedroom wasn’t an option. Just the thought made her want to drive off into the night with no destination and no return time. She scrolled through her contacts twice before she decided on her younger sister, June. The girl spent most of her time at clubs and Clover needed that kind of experience. If she wanted to move forward and settle down, and she truly did, then she needed to enjoy one last night and press forward. No more passing out on the couch. No more waking up on a front lawn. Maybe less of those things and not so much of a complete banning.

“June? I want to go out tonight. Pick the club. I don’t care where we go, but I need to get out of this apartment.” Clover sat down on the foot of her bed and stared at the empty closet. Zach, being the gentleman, had thrown most of her clothes on the closet floor. “I’m telling him tomorrow that I forgive him.”

Just like that, she knew the answer. She knew before he had left. She knew the moment he sat down next to her and shared a meager breakfast of dry cereal. When she hung up with June, she called her other close friends: First she called Karla, then she called Celine, and then she called Eva. They dropped their plans and agreed to go out with her, even though they had work or family. Even though they were all in their mid to late twenties, they made it seem like they were in their thirties, headed right into their forties.

She hung up her phone and sat it aside, but she picked it up once more. Zach had agreed to give her time. She had asked for time. But what if he called? What if he wanted to talk to her as much as she wanted to tell him her final decision? She picked out the most obvious ringtone available. Britney Spears, “Oops!... I Did It Again.”

When she set the ringtone, she placed her phone aside and shed her relaxing clothing in favor of more scene-appropriate clothing. Her friends said they were dressing up. She should have gone to her closet out and pulled out some skimpy little number and high heels. Instead, she grabbed a pair of leather leggings and tugged on a pair of scuffed combat boots. The club scene was what she made of it, and she wanted an escape, not a one-night stand. She topped her outfit off with a maroon-colored crop top that shifted to the right to show off a single strap of her nude-colored bra.

She walked confidently, until she caught her reflection in a mirror just to the left of the door. She looked fine. Her hair was in an organized disarray, despite the fact that the words were acronyms. Her eyes were decorated with mascara and liquid liner. In the pit of her stomach, she knew. Her friends were going to pry her from her thoughts and force her out onto the dancefloor with some nineteen-year-old pervert. She would end up hanging on the guy’s every word. He would grab her ***. She would cause a scene.

Rolling her eyes, she looked away from her reflection and marched out of her apartment. None of her neighbors were out, so she didn’t have to explain the previous night’s exchange or the morning’s exchange. She walked right past their closed doors and hitched a ride on the creaky elevator. On the bottom floor, she dipped her head to avoid a few gazes and went out into the chilly night. If she were farther away from the club, Clover might have grabbed a jacket, but the club was only a block or two from the apartment building. She didn’t need to hail a cab or grab a train. She crossed her arms over her chest to hoard the warmth and walked down the length of her street.

June started waving as soon as Clover rounded the corner. The girls had gathered together on the corner of the street, their backs to the crowd and sound of the club. Necropolis. That had been the chosen club. June had never been there before, but Celine loved the place. The woman said she’d gotten so drunk that she barely remembered the night; she said she woke up in another district, wandering about as if she were trying to find something. The girls all had a good laugh with that story. Celine was the type to drink herself to a stupor.

“I thought we were meeting at the club, not down the street,” Clover grinned. She jogged the rest of the way toward her friends and embraced each and every one of them, holding her sister longer than the others. June. The girl wore a skimpy dress and flashy heels, the epitome of a clubster. “I feel underdressed.” Clover never got to continue, not with the irritating bass of her ringtone.

“No cell phones tonight,” Karla sang, bumping hips with Eva. Of course the two of them began to snicker, knowing exactly what the ringtone meant, knowing the identity of the caller.

“Do not answer that.” June looked furious and disappointed, caught between snatching the phone from her older sister’s hand and giving up on the girls’ night altogether.

Clover hesitated. She hesitated just long enough to miss the phone call, and then silence fell on the small group. If it weren’t for the rising beat from the Necropolis, the girls might have thought they were all alone in the city. Celine started talking about the interior of the club, explaining how the inhabitants acted and how she ended up stumbling onto quite the hunk during her last visit. Eva was talking about how she feigned sick and ditched work, while Karla just laughed and nodded along. When the phone rang again, Clover growled in frustration and yanked the phone from her front pocket. She needed to answer the phone and tell Zach to call back later. She needed to answer.

She thought she heard June mention a man near their group, but the phone call took priority. Clover already had her mouth open to scold her on-again boyfriend when a hand closed around her wrist. The man had an iron grip. That was all she could think about as she closed her own hand around her phone. She had already answered. At that moment, Zach heard everything. He heard the girls gasping and their frenzy of words and curses and shouts.

What had she done to deserve such treatment? What had she done wrong? Was he going to hurt her? Was he going to hurt her friends? What if he murdered her? What if he--her tears streamed like black rivers along her freckled cheeks. And then she saw red. She saw so much red.