Matala by Craig Holden

in that thin light, I saw myself. I saw my face in her face—as if there were something physical of me in her. And it scared me so badly that I recoiled.
    â€œMy God,” she said. “I know I look a fright in the morning, but I didn’t mean to offend you.”
    â€œNo,” I said. “You look good.”
    â€œWell, you’re a gentleman. Somebody raised you right.”
    â€œYou do,” I said. “It’s not that. It’s…just weird.”
    â€œWell, that’s lovely then. I’ll take weird over hideous.”
    â€œNot you. Me. Us, I mean. It’s like we’re…alike.”
    She looked away and said, “What do you mean?”
    â€œI don’t mean, you know, emotionally or how we act. I mean how we look. Who we are. Like you’re me. Or I’m you.”
    â€œYou are what’s weird.”
    â€œWell, that may be, but what’s between us is weird, too. Isn’t it?”
    â€œWhat is between us?”
    â€œI don’t know,” I said. “I was hoping you’d tell me.”
    It wasn’t long after this that she began to reduce the restriction on our drinking too much. And one night we did shots of Cuervo with lime slices in a decent hotel bar in Kansas City, paid for on the expense account of a lonely dental supplies salesman from Tulsa whom she’d shamelessly led on. (I was her little brother in these scenarios.) After we’d separated the guy from a wad of his cash and ditched him, and had fallen into our room, she informed me that I was a bad, bad boy and that it was all her doing, and she felt sorry for that. Then she laughed. I grabbed her suddenly and kissed her on the mouth. She struggled to refuse me, but I had her in a good grip and just forced it, something I had never done to a woman before. When I let her go, she slapped me on the side of the head so hard that my ear rang into the next day. And that, you might think, would’ve been that.
    But I could see in her face that something had changed. Or been released. She had always seemed a particularly animated creature to me, alive in the way most people could never be. But now it was as if someone had discovered she was electric and had plugged her in.
    I leaned in to kiss her again, but she pulled away and said, “Take your clothes off.”
    I looked at her a moment and said, “Wow. That was quick. Maybe we could—”
    She grabbed my hair and pulled my head back until I fell onto one of the beds, and said into my ringing ear, “I said take your fucking clothes off.”
    And that’s when it really began between us.
    Although the subject of her initial disinclination toward anything physical would come up in the weeks and months that followed, and I asked repeatedly, she never revealed the reasons behind it. Except to say that she was actually a very traditional lady and didn’t just go around leaping into the sack with any boy she happened to meet on the road.

    B EFORE WE WERE TO BOARD the train, Darcy and I left Justine with the packs to find the restrooms. I returned first. Justine was squatting on the floor beside her pack, which was next to the new red nylon one Darcy had bought that morning before ditching her set of Vuittons. When I sat down, she said, “You have to listen to me.” She spoke quietly. “You can’t know me.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œOn the train. Act like you don’t know me.”
    â€œFor how long?”
    â€œUntil I say otherwise.” She unzipped one of the exterior compartments on her pack, removed the pill bottle I’d last seen on her bed in the hostel, and handed it to me.
    â€œIt’s up to you whether to risk carrying it over. I cannot. It’ll probably be fine, but if it’s not, you’re in deep shit. If you’re not comfortable with that, throw it away.”
    â€œWhat’s going on?”
    â€œYou stay with her. Do you