Black Tickets by Jayne Anne Phillips Page B

were torn, bruised purple under the nails. The rolled drawings were torn and smoldering on the floor. I moved to stomp them out and heard her moan, turned, saw matches in her hands; she striking and tossing them in the air where they’d flare and fall smoking. I grabbed her arms and everything was breaking, chairs cracking on the floor and the light bulb splintering. I saw her hair on fire under my hand and I rolled her onto the bed. All the time she moaned long and low like I wasn’t there except that this thing was on top of her. Her eyes were calm and her burned hair broke in my hand. I pulled her down and heard my breath coming high and watered like a woman’s; she felland lay there, her lips moving. She drooled and the spit flecked red where her teeth had cut. I stood over her and yelled for her to see me. Her eyes rolling past me pulled my hands to her clothes and the cloth ripped. I slapped her, kept slapping her and my hands were fists. I looked up and he’s watching us—always goddamn watching us—then he is talking quietly and pulling her from under me.
    WATCHING
    He was ramming his fists into the floor beside her head but he thought he was hitting her and asked me later had he killed her. The floor was splintered, fine wood in his hands, and she under him stared glazed at the ceiling. Her mumbled Spanish mixed in the room with the sulfur smell of something burned. When I pulled her from under him I saw her hair was burned ragged and her shirt seared in the back. I took it off and wrapped her in blankets; she was shivering. There was broken glass and her fingers were bloodied somehow. She kept talking to nothing, tossing her head from side to side, hands clinched in my hair so tight that when I lay her down I can’t move from her. Have to bend over her, my face close though she doesn’t see me; I touch her lips, the cuts scabbing and her teeth flecked with the dull dried blood. I smell her breath coming shallow and fast, say her name over and over until she hears me. Almost focusing she slides her hands slow from my hair down my face to her breasts, holding them.
    Late that night, Dude sits by the window. Rain spills in; he watches the smoky trains jerk in the yard, moisture on warm soot a fine dust in the air. He blinks like he’s slappedwhen he hears her clutch her throat and turn in her sleep. I talk, Dude smells her on his split knuckles, and the streaked curtains move all night.
    Toward morning he paced the room, circling from door to window. Hands held delicate, he looked at me. His eyes I think were gray and heavy-lashed; the lid of the right one drooped and softened that side of his face. Finally he turned and left; his pointed boots tapped a faint click on the stairs each step down.
    She woke up in twisted blankets and raised her fingers to her face. We ate the bread slow, her mouth bleeding a little. I’m seeing her in summer by the stove in their room, sweat clouding her hair and her lips pursed with cheap wine; she smoothing her cotton skirt and throwing back her hair to bend over the burner with a cigarette, frowning as the blue flame jets up fast. On the street under my window she is walking early in the day, tight black skirt ripped in the slit that moves on her leg. Looking back she sees me watching and buys carnations from the blind man on the corner, walks back, tosses them up to me. She laughs and the flowers falling all around her are pale, their long stems tangling. The street is shaded in buildings and her face turned up to me is lost in black hair. She is small and she is washed in grilled shadow.
    Fingers too swollen to button her shirt, she asked me would I get her something to soak them in. At the drugstore buying antiseptic and gauze I felt her standing shakily by the couch, touching her mouth with her purple fingers. Walking back fast I knew she was gone, took almost nothing. The ashed drawings were swept up and thrown probably from the window. He left for good soon after, thirty