Necessary Risk

They came to the north country for gold but left with their hands full of copper. It turned their skin green but was cheaper by half and shone just as nice, so they sniffed out the clear water seams and dug deep into the rock, carved that peninsula more than Superior waters had done in ten thousand years. Quarries, open pits cupped dust and sky in equal amounts, nearly as wide as the lake, it seemed, spread into the places the forest used to be. And underneath were the mines: black mazes leading into halls where the walls ran with water and copper dust. They’d been abandoned for years and most were grown over with walking ferns and creepers, but you could still cut your way in and bellycrawl into the dark, waiting for the moment the ceiling would lift away and you could stand again, the relief so great you almost forgot the thirty-thousand pounds of limestone above your head.

***

We took the copper from the scrapyards, prided ourselves on snatching it straight from the trains before it shipped south. Dank dog’s breath at our heels when we ran from the flashlights, scrambling over those fences onto our asses and straight into the Jack pine woods—both certain our rangy leg muscles would hold out a great deal longer than a rent-a-cop with the jitters, though the dogs could still scare us some and our backpacks were heavy with loot.

Us was my best friend Cat and me. Cat with a flint-chip tooth and blue eyes, hungry skinny Cat with home-cut hair. Me, Deandra, I was Dee. We were twenty-five and had been in Iron River our whole lives. Run the tap and you’d taste everything they were mining from the quarries just outside the town. That was how we thought of this place: you ate rocks, drank dirt.

Last winter Cat’s dad had gone over to Duluth to see some friends and decided to stay awhile, and once it became apparent he didn’t plan on coming back I cleared out his closet and hauled my own stuff in. Cat didn’t mind, and my mother didn’t either—it was too crowded in my house anyway, even with just the two of us. So I stripped the bed of Cat’s father’s sheets and made myself a nest from where, late at night, I’d listen to Cat’s restless pacing and the creaking of the house expanding and shrinking, the old rusted pipes sending shivers through the walls.

I’d had some classes in Marquette and worked as a physical therapist, driving around the county to stop by people’s houses and work the knots out of their bodies. It paid very little but I liked the work more than I’d anticipated, enjoying the way it felt to put my hands on my clients’ bare skin, the contact immediately followed by an involuntary flinch and release of tension when I began to knead the muscles, drawing their day’s work up and out into the air. My clients were mostly older men, taking time after winter work to address the various ills that had built up in them, and I liked the quiet way they settled into my touch, their hour’s relief much larger than that of sore muscles.

Cat worked in a Blockbuster, which I figured only stayed open because this far north we were out of the cell tower zone, and as they couldn’t run cables for internet under the ground without worrying about the freeze, and snow would knock a satellite down, you had pretty few options for entertainment outside the CinePlex an hour away in Marquette. When I got off from work I liked to meet him for the hour before he’d be done; we’d split a bag of Skittles and browse the shelves with his coworker Andy, a punky sophomore with managerial ambitions.

Give me Tarantino any day of the week, Andy said, and I’ll show you a master. He tossed a handful of Skittles in his mouth and choked slightly. Give me Coppola. Give me Ford.

Dumbass, Cat said. Tarantino’s a hack.

It was early evening. The store was empty. Late-spring sunlight warmed the blue carpet in buttery-looking patches.

Who’s your choice, then? I asked.

Cat thought for a moment. Malick, he said. Badlands. He knew what being an outlaw was about.

Andy scoffed. An auteur, he said. Typical of you.

Oh?

Andy touched his nametag lightly, seemed to fluff himself up a bit. He was short, slight to Cat’s mean heft. All Andy had to defend himself was his sneer.

I’m just saying, he said—glancing at me for support; I immediately found the box for Cat People fascinating—it’s a lot of empty substance. Those movies are too fucking quiet. Who cares about the prairie? I want my scripts to have some punch.

Badlands is about murderers, I said mildly.

The bell over the door chimed; a middle-aged couple walked in, a miner and his girlfriend. They headed straight for Horror. Andy gave us a final look of exasperation and bustled away. He’d left his bag of Skittles on the shelf; I offered them to Cat. He shook his head. I popped one in my mouth without looking and regretted the acid yellow taste. I hated sweet things.

Can you believe him, Cat said. Tarantino.

I was surprised at his vehemence, and told him so. I’d known Cat for a decade but hadn’t thought he cared so much about movies.

I can watch artsy films too. He sounded hurt.

I just mean—really. Malick?

He stared at the shelf. Those are big movies, he said. They’re…he paused. They’re expansive. He straightened the Cat People DVD case, his thumb over the arch-backed heroine’s face.  And who gives a fuck about dialogue, anyway.

The yellow taste on my tongue was just beginning to recede. Yellow like the fluorescent stripes running along the walls. They hurt my eyes. My forearms hurt too—I’d spent the afternoon with a man in his forties bent with arthritis. Early onset, unusual in a man. He knew it, too.

As we left, we passed the couple on their way to the checkout counter. I could see Cat eyeing the miner.

Don’t get any ideas, I cautioned.

I wasn’t even thinking about it, he said.

You know they’ve been warned, I continued, watching uneasily as Cat’s gaze shifted from the miner to his girlfriend. They get fired for giving tips about where the haul is going.

Cat stared at the woman’s ass. Do you think that’s uncomfortable? he said. The thong?

I hissed at him to shut up. He laughed. Cat the needler. Cat the knife. He knew how to twist just so under my skin. He always had.

Outside in the parking lot he put his arm around me. Don’t be jealous, he said.

I pushed him away. Pushed away the hot feeling in my stomach too. Jealous. Fuck him.

Long shadows ran away from the pines. The snow slurry gathered in ashy hillocks on the sides of the parking lot, melting into long puddles.

But seriously, Cat said, buckling in, I’m not about to bother some dig-boy about where the copper’s going.

Good, I said.

Please, Dee. You know me. He backed out of the parking space and paused, his hand on my headrest as he twisted around to check the rear. If I had leaned back, he could have tangled his fingers in my hair.

He grinned at me and I recoiled—his mouth was stained a hideous bruised color, his teeth a bleached gray. When I wasn’t looking, he’d eaten all the purple Skittles.

If we want the real fun, I know where it is.

***

We’d always stolen the scrap. It sold well and we were fast. Never from home construction sites or power stations—we weren’t trashy and we weren’t stupid—only from the scrapyards. It sucks to be the middleman, Cat said, referring to the yards where the big freights sat heavy with tangles of copper wires and aluminum siding paused on its overnight to Milwaukee. You take on the necessary risk and this is where it gets you.

Cat usually knew somebody willing to buy so we’d sell for twenties on the pound and treat ourselves to Denny’s and beers and a new DVD. I always kept some back, meaning Cat spent a little while ribbing me for a tight-ass, but I had the feeling I was building some sort of safety. Maybe it was just guilt.

Our first run had gone like this:

We were seventeen. Angry in our own private ways. It was high summer in the north woods and the urge to do something ugly had gotten as persistent as the mosquitos fogging over the lakes at night. We were bitten to the bone and crazed.

It was midnight, and we sat on Cat’s porch sharing a spliff. We’d had plenty already and with each inhale I could feel my lungs crackle, my head grow lighter on my neck.

You know something? Cat asked.

What?

The miners here used to be rich, he said. They all had, like, two houses and wives they imported from England.

Those poor women.

They took so much copper this whole place is hollow, he continued. They took it all. He lay flat on his back and rolled his hips lazily. I watched how his belt glinted under the weak light.

Cat paused. Dane Evans told me where there’s still some left.

Some what?

Copper. He sat up, with such force that he appeared startled by it. Dane said he knows someone who’ll pay.

To steal it, I said.

Yes, Cat said.

I sat with that for a moment. Slapped a mosquito away from my thigh.

Okay.

We left our bikes a mile away and walked to about a hundred yards of the scrapyard’s front gate. It was padlocked shut and we could see a security camera tilted down into a circle of light from a single lamppost.

Do we climb the fence or what? My high was wearing off and logistics were becoming my primary concern.

Cat shrugged, took a deep breath, and sprinted at the gate. Incredibly, I thought he planned to simply pass through the chain. But at the last moment he launched himself upward and swung over. I was alone on the other side.

Cat besting me? I grit my teeth and ran. The rusty chainlink bit into my palms when I hoisted myself over. Cat smiled as I dropped down and pulled me into the shadows.

Not bad.

I dusted my hands off. Easy.

Dane Evan says they keep it on a freight in the back. Cat gestured into the dark.

So let’s go. I kept my voice steady.

The darkness became huge piles of scrap: mashed cars and barrels and piles of sheeting and bikes crushed together in mountains. I worried that our presence would disturb the atmosphere and send everything rushing in at us. I wondered what it would feel like to be crushed under the scrap.

Cat paused. There it is.

The freight was parked in the back of the lot where the tracks ran into the yard. Jagged and looping tags in neon colors coated the boxcars like strange flowers.

He said it should be…Cat ran his eyes along the line of cars. That one.

We scooted over, hunched in the shadows. I could feel Cat’s heat next to me; he always ran hot. I leaned closer to him as we rounded the edge of the boxcar. A fusty, metal smell rose from the siding: the underbelly of a car, or like fresh asphalt still cooling.

The door slid open with a horrible screech, and we froze until the echo died. When we looked into the car it was empty save for several unmarked crates. I knew it was not the case, but it seemed as though everything were in black and white.

Maybe it’s booby trapped? Cat poked his foot at one.

When we propped open the lid, we were silent, in awe.

This is like, five thousand dollars, Cat said. Just sitting here. Maybe six.

I stared at the heap of metal, the twisted struts and piping jammed into the crate, all of it a mute orange color in the half-light. I turned to Cat. How much can we get in the backpack?

We filled the Jansport to the brim, picked the small scrim at the top of the crate. I was certain Cat would poke a rib out through his skin but he shouldered the backpack anyway. We estimated fifteen pounds max—a light load for the first run. It was assumed we’d be back. And I wasn’t going to question that. There was something strange plastered against the back of my skull, like another me was in there. It felt like stretching, coming alive. I wondered if Cat felt it too, and when he helped me down from the boxcar, I thought the shake in his hands might be that second self pushing out, making him bounce on his heels in the dark. Cat the arrow, ready to fly.

Oh boy, he said. Oh boy oh boy.

We almost made it to the front gate. Prancing thieves! We’d spent the money already, threefold.

And then we heard it behind us. I turned around. Cat didn’t.

A junkyard dog, big and stiff-shouldered, the kind of dog who got fed once a week to keep him sharp and mean. Hackles up. No chain in sight.

I knew just by looking, that dog would bite. That dog would bite and not let go.

Cat, I whispered. Please.

The meanest sound I’d ever heard came from inside the dog, somewhere deep inside it. It lunged.

Fuck! Cat screamed—and we ran.

I’d never gone so fast, vaulting over the fence after him. Cat! I sobbed. Would he wait? He did. He grabbed me by the arm and dragged me into the woods, crashing blind against pine trees, needles raking our arms and faces. The whole world rang with the dog’s bays. I could hear it everywhere, louder than the blood in my ears. A branch cracked me across the face and I cried out. There was blood in my mouth.

And just as I was certain we were about to be ripped to shreds, that I’d feel teeth bursting through my calf and into my bone or, worse, that the animal would kill Cat first and I’d not be able to tear it away from him, and I’d watch Cat’s blood run down his throat into the loam, suddenly—I felt it—the dog was gone: only silence behind us as we crashed through the woods, panting and slavering to get away.

We halted. Nothing chased us. I thought I might vomit.

Cat, bent over, shuddered a little and then straightened. He still held the backpack tight to his chest. I thought surely he would have dropped it.

We did it, he wheezed. He held the backpack up in victory, then staggered over to me. He drew me close, the bag between us jabbing into my stomach. I wished I could push it aside. He smelled sweet and salty, a boy’s smell. I could feel him tremble, and when he stepped back his eyes were bright, the kind of look he got when we smoked too much and went to the quarry to pitch stones and laugh.

I was seventeen then. Us, Cat and I. We were copper thieves. I was so incredibly happy.

***

The Keweenaw found the copper first, of course. Seven thousand years ago. They pulled it from the clear cold rivers and from it they made beads and statues, often making dozens of identical flat twisted serpents that glowed red-gold until, later, they turned a bright, mottled green—perfectly brilliant snakes closer to the real thing than before. This is called oxidation: the process by which copper grows its green patina. The metal doesn’t actually change into anything different. This exterior transformation can, in fact, take years, sometimes decades. Which may have been why it took so long for the miners to understand, many millennia later, that the gold they dug up from the peninsula and hauled to the surface wasn’t what they thought it was, not gold at all but its dupe. Not until the telltale green bloom across the polished gold appeared would they realize, years later, that they had been mistaken.

***

Dee, Cat complained from down the hall. The fridge is empty.

I rolled over on my bed. I’d been cocooned in a ball of comforters, and his voice was muted beneath the layers. It was early spring and I liked to keep the windows open even when it made the room freeze. The combination of heat and cold, I believed, was good for your blood.

Poking my head above the covers a bit more, I could hear him padding down the hall, drumming on the walls as he went. A few months ago it seemed as though Cat had truly understood his dad wasn’t coming back, and his immediate response was to trash the house, slowly at first, just plates of food left out for days and knobs pulled carelessly off drawers, but then it became bigger: a hole in the screen door; puddles of water that leached through the bathroom floor. I’d put my foot down when I found a patch of mushrooms growing behind the television cabinet.

Cat stood in the doorway. Food?

There’s beer in the basement.

He stared at me; I suddenly felt odd, lying in the bed. I wondered sometimes if there were something in the way Cat occasionally stood outside my bedroom—his father’s bedroom—and watched me while I read. What? I’d say, and he’d slip away softly. I wondered it when I heard him in the night, his bedsprings creaking, and I’d ache while I wondered what he thought of as he jerked himself off.

Can we make something?

Fine.

I followed him into the kitchen and pulled out the mixing for pancakes. From the corner of my eye I watched as he bounced on the edge of his seat, jitters running all up and through him.

You’re bored.

He nodded.

Lately I’d seen Cat itching to make a run to the yards. But I was nervous—there’d been news about scrap thieves down in Fond Du Lac getting sent to jail, or others electrocuted when the haul was trip-wired. Rumors a man in Oconomowoc had been shot with his arms full of scrap. When I told Cat so he scoffed.

We’ve never been caught, he said. You’re too fast. I’m too good.

It takes once, I said.

Faithless.

Cocky, I shot back.

Damn right. He grabbed at his jeans and jostled himself around.

Give me a reason to do it.

He ticked them off on his fingers. Electric. Internet. Water. Car payment.

Nice try. I shook my head. I’ve got three loggers over in Labranche tomorrow. Torn rotator cuffs and a back sprain. They’ll tip well.

Your job doesn’t pay that well.

Why don’t you get one that does?

At that he sat back in his kitchen chair. I was sorry I’d lobbed it so sharp but it was true. He looked at me quietly.

You know what it’s like, he said.

I did. I put a hundred miles a day on my car driving to catch my money as I could, and while I loved the place we lived, the seas of black-eyed susans in the summer and the winter so deep it froze the ground fifteen feet below, I knew Cat was right. Iron in the water and not much else.

Cat gave me a searching look. We could go somewhere.

Where?

He shrugged. Maybe west, he said. Montana. They’ve got oil there.

Those towns aren’t for women.

Find yourself a job easy there, then, he said. Raised his eyebrows. Plenty of lonely hearts.

Fuck you, I said.

Aw, he said. Baby. I don’t mean it. He reached up to where I stood and pulled me into his lap, slobbered on my neck, barking like a dog.

I shoved him away. Baby yourself—I was spitting mad, and felt foxed into a corner. I made myself into a fortress and eyed him where he stood, smiling like he was quite sure I would forgive him. My chest was so tight. Loving Cat was so much pain. He could go to Montana and find himself an oil-well whore if he wanted to so bad. Within six months she’d be pregnant and he’d wonder what the weather was like in Fargo. But she’d get him in the end. Genetics and child support were a slut’s revenge.

He shifted; I could see his vertebra through his shirt. His muscles would be stretched so tight across the bones. I wanted to wet my tongue down every one.

Fine, I said. You want to run copper—we’ll go tonight.

***

The seams where you find copper are often deep, deep underground. They intermix with other minerals like barite and zinc inside the great granite shields stretching down from Canada. The deposits lie in horizontal sheets, sometimes so thin they are nearly invisible, and the only way to find them is to destroy the entire upper layers or, in the pitch black, to shine your light across the stone walls and catch a glimpse of orange wash seeping out from between the sediment levels. Sometimes this copper spray is already oxidizing; it stains the rock in shades of psychedelic green. It weeps down from the cracks in the stone. Sometimes it looks as though the stone is bleeding.

***

It went wrong from the start.

Cat wanted to try a new yard on the edge of Marquette, a big place with three electronic gates, cameras. They were getting smarter, more vigilant—it was a seller’s market, everybody wanted a piece—and I was concerned we were overreaching.

We’ve never disabled a camera.

Cat smiled encouragingly. We’re not disabling it. Same play as always: over the fence. Hug the walls. The camera won’t even see us.

I frowned. But Cat had a way of making everything seem much more reasonable than it was, and it could be he had a point.

We made it in fine, headed right into a long dark corridor between warehouses that should have taken us to the supply. It didn’t feel good walking between the aluminum siding: with the black sky and high walls, it felt like you were going blind, everything getting darker and tighter instead of heading toward an opening.

When we reached the end of the warehouses we paused.

Where’s the boxcar? Cat pulled out his phone, checked a grainy photo he’d pulled off an internet map. It should be right here. He stared out at an empty clearing. There was nothing there at all, just dirt and a chainlink fence. Did we get turned around?

Suddenly everything went white. I blinked, trying to see. An instant headache brewed behind my eyes from the shock of the light. It was as if every surface in the yard was lit up and reflecting at us.

Shit, Cat hissed. We pressed against the warehouse siding but nothing could make us go invisible with all that light. I reached for Cat’s hand but couldn’t find it.

We felt them before we saw them. We ran before we heard their feet on the ground behind us, men, guards, people whose entire job was this: catching people like us. No one spoke. It was like our first run, but I understood now that we had never considered our bodies before, too young to see the eventual point in time where your legs won’t move, your heart won’t beat, your lungs can’t draw the air you need to run and run and run faster than the thing behind you.

And I’d never considered how much money we were stealing, not really. That somebody, at some point, would care.

A noise like a nail gun. A hollow clang, whoosh of air. Sparks flew where the bullet hit in the scrap piles.

We were twenty yards from the front entrance, then ten, then five, then sprinting down the block to where I’d parked the car. Fuck the cameras: they’d have our faces on a dozen screens by now. I could tell the guards had peeled off but this was no surrender—and in fact high in the night now there was a wail: sirens: they’d called the police.

At the car. The scene was patchy. My hands had keys in them. My hands were at the door.

I threw myself in the front seat and screamed at Cat to get in.

Cat was shaking, tangled in the seatbelt. No. No no no. No.

I stomped the pedal to the floor and the car lunged through down the street. I’d thought that was just an expression but it turns out you can actually do it.

The sirens were louder now.

Where’s the highway? I asked. Find me an entrance ramp.

I didn’t know these streets. They’d get us down a one-way, or in a bottleneck near the university, unless we could lose them down a flat open stretch.

Red and white lights behind us. My tongue tasted of copper. There was acid running down my throat. I refused to turn and look. They didn’t need to see my face. I didn’t need to see theirs.

There! Cat pointed; I swung the wheel. On the highway we pushed to seventy, seventy-five, eighty. The car was whining, sluggish to go over ninety. Suddenly an odd trickle of wind from my right, and then: a flood of air: the whole car was wind: everything in the cabin rustled and flew about like inside a tornado.

Shut the window! I smacked Cat with my right hand while my left clutched the wheel. What are you doing?

He’d craned himself half out the window, twisting up and out. His hair whipped crazily around his head as the car listed like a drunk. Cat the mad dog. He howled while I screamed.

He drew his head in. We’re losing them, he reported, cranking up the window. They’re pulling back.

Asshole. I wiped my cheeks.

He was quiet. Oh Dee, he said. He put his hand on my leg. I wouldn’t have fallen. Don’t be scared.

***

We slid into a dark corner of the map fifty miles from home, found a ten-buck motel off the interstate.

The desk attendant raised his eyebrow at us. How many hours?

All night, I said.

The attendant looked me up and down, then turned back to Cat. Wrap it up, at least, the attendant told him.

Cat gave him an even look. Give us the goddamn room.

There was just one bed and a television. The dresser door, torn-off, rested against the wall. Watermarks spread on the ceiling. I didn’t want to sit on the bed so I sat on the floor instead.

Cat lingered in the door. I’m gonna walk to the gas station, Cat said. Want anything?

I looked at him carefully. You’ll be back soon?

He fished in his pockets. Yeah, he said finally. He smiled, cocked his head, like he was daring me to say what I was really asking. Just wait here.

There was nothing good on television. I watched a pair of engineers explain how dinosaurs turned into oil and how you could turn that oil into gasoline with just a little chemistry. On another channel a fat woman wept while a well-known celebrity explained that she, the fat woman, would be headed to Las Vegas for a shot at a million dollars. The audience chanted her name and waved signs.

If they found us, we’d go to jail. There was no way we could pretend it was our first time. Or second, or third, or tenth. How many times had we already shown up on cameras without realizing, blips and shadows that could be cobbled into a face?

I sat bolt upright. The gas station. How fast did it take to make a police sketch? How long had he been gone?

The door opened.

Cat held a cardboard case aloft. Got the good stuff, he said. Imported.

I wanted to rage at him, walking into the room so whole and safe. How dare he be so much himself while I sat in a fleabag motel ignoring the obvious cum stains on the duvet?

He hesitated; he seemed to be measuring something. It struck me that it had been a long time since I had been entirely sure of what was happening in Cat’s head. I had taken it for granted that we’d felt the same, been of the same heart as when we were teenagers running from a dog in the woods. I wondered how close that dog had ever been behind us.

I came back, he said.

I swallowed it all down. You did.

We cracked the beers and drank steadily. Cat sat on the bed and I leaned against it.

This show is so fake. He gestured to the television where the celebrity was now chastising a teenager for her pitchy audition. We already know who’s going to win.

But that’s not the point. The show’s about their stories, I said. It’s about watching them grow.

I want to see something different happen, he said. I looked up, startled by the frustration in his voice. I want to see an ending that’s actually a surprise. I want somebody to tell the show, fuck you. I want—he trailed off. Shook his head.

I opened the second case of beer. My stomach was numb and queer and my neck was warm, loose.

Montana, I said, my tongue haphazard in my mouth, is a terrible state.

Cat stroked my hair. Dee, he said, you’re the limit. You’re the tops.

It’s a genuine wasteland. You’d probably enjoy it.

Tell me about it, he said. I couldn’t tell if this was a comment or instruction. I looked up; his eyes were closed, the light from the television casting his face in blue.

At some point I drifted off, my head resting against Cat’s leg. The denim smelled like crank oil and detergent. The door opened, and my mother walked in.

Where have you been? she asked. Her lipstick was smeared. Her face was not my mother’s face, but it was her.

I looked down and saw my body surrounded by dirt, up to my waist. My hands were buried. The dirt was warm, uncomfortably so. My mother began to wail.

They’ve buried me, she cried. They’ve buried my hands.

The dirt was up to my shoulders now.

Why didn’t you stop them? I said. Her lips moved as mine did. Vertigo overtook me. I couldn’t move my neck; I could smell the dirt now.

I woke. The television was still on, though muted now.

I didn’t want to disturb you. Cat rested his fingers lightly on top of my head.

On the television the celebrity was now growing progressively younger—a montage of their earlier years, pre-stardom. Acne blossomed across her chin. She toddled in a yard filled with magnolias.

Cat, I whispered. What are we going to do?

He stroked my hair. It’s okay, Dee. They’re gone. They aren’t looking for us. We’re okay. They didn’t get us. They never do.

I lay flat on the floor. I was still drunk. I took Cat’s foot and placed it on my face, the long arch right down my cheek.

He laughed. What’s that?

I slid my fingers under his sock and felt his ankle. It always surprised me how heavy the skeleton was, when I worked with clients, or at least before time and age make the body a shadow of itself. Like stone, it gets whittled away.

I pressed his foot into my forehead, molding his toes against my skull. His sole smelled damp and sour; I inhaled deeply. Cat’s head was tipped back, his eyes closed. I felt so tender to him. I kneaded up his leg, inching my hand along his calf, his hair like soft underwater fronds brushing against my fingertips.

Cat shifted. A noise was caught in the back of his throat. I parted my lips and pressed the tip of my tongue to his arch, gave an experimental lick. I heard him suck in his breath. It was the same gratifying sound I heard at work, the shock of a body suddenly feeling pleasure, relaxation, comfort. I licked again and Cat gave a heavy chuff. My groin throbbed.

Dee.

It took me a moment to hear him.

Dee.

He lifted his foot gently from my face. I went cold. I could sense, rather than see, that he had looked away, toward the blank beige spot on the wall where the window was draped with heavy, plasticized curtains.

I’m sorry, he said. It was my fault.

If I remained still, my body might disappear. I could turn myself into air, transmute each particle that had touched Cat into something else. I would become nothingness since he permeated every bit of me.

He continued. It was pushing our luck anyway.  I just wanted—

Again he trailed off. I refused to speak. I’d interrupt my process of unbecoming.

The first time we ran copper, he said to the beige window.

I sensed this story was not really for me, but listened anyway.

When that dog chased us, he said, I was so scared you weren’t going to be fast enough. I slowed down for you. I didn’t even think about it, no question. I couldn’t have left you behind.

I think about that, he said. A lot. That it wasn’t a choice that I slowed down. That I didn’t have a choice.

He took a deep breath. When we go home tomorrow, I’m going to call my cousin out in Duluth, see if he’s got a job for me. He’s on a roofing crew. It’s not Montana but it’s west.

On the television the celebrity lounged on the hood of a sports car. She was singing and holding a basket of apples. They were green.

I’m going to sleep, I said.

Oh, he said. Okay. A pause. Then he asked, do you want to come up here with me?

Cat the knife. I was bloody with my love.

I flipped on my side and affected heavy breathing until he drew his legs up onto the bed, and I could now watch the woman on television smile lovingly at her basket of fruit, untouched, while Cat fell asleep above me.

***

They came for us at daybreak.

Pounding on the door. I raised my head and blinked into the half-light. Every part of my body ached. I had not disappeared.

More bangs on the door. Whatever they said, I wasn’t listening. I sat up—too quickly; the blood rushed to my head and my vision tunneled. The ceiling was so low. My lungs were compressing.

Cat stood in front of the beige window, curtains still drawn. Red flashing lights from outside threw aortic shadows across it. His arm stretched to the door, hand resting lightly on the knob.

It seemed so long, the stretch of time he remained that way. Surely he was doing a great deal of calculation, balancing the seconds left before the choice wasn’t his anymore. He didn’t look back. I didn’t call to him. We’d both keep pretending as long as we could before Cat moved (swift arrow, he)—

unlatched the chain and

threw open the door to let them in.

_________

Bridget Apfeld was born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She currently lives in Austin, Texas where she writes and works as a production associate and editor, and serves as Associate Editor for Carve magazine. Her previous and forthcoming work can be found in various literary journals, including Brevity, So to Speak, Able Muse, Midwestern Gothic, and the Alaska Quarterly Review.