"How much longer are you going to force me to do this?"

     I liked Nin. She didn't whine the way other girls did--she complained a lot, though--about everything.
     "I'll stop when you get it right," I repositioned her fingertips on the strings and applied pressure. I moved her right  wrist to produce a sweeping motion. I had never been so close to just becoming someone's hands.
          "We've been at it for hours."
     "And you're still not very good at it, are you?"
     "Lee-- my fingers are sore and bloody."
     "As are my ears," I muttered.
     "What was that? You're always mumbling."
     I cleared my throat, "I said that I've never in my life met someone with absolutely no musical ability-- until you. Even children have those rhythm sticks."
     She smiled.
     "What?" I asked.
     "According to you I am a child."
     "I don't know what you are. Not musical."
     "You can move my hands as much as you want. It's not going to make me play any better."
     I looked down at our hands. I hadn't realized that I was persistent even during the conversation. I released her and she reached down into my jacket pockets.
     This was alarming.
     "Excuse me?"
     "Yes?" She continued to wiggle her hands in there.
     "Mind telling me what you're doing?"
     "You need a cigarette."
     "I'm quite capable of getting one myself."
     "Oh no, I insist. You see, if you are going to be my hands, the least I can be is yours."
     "I liked you better when you were crying."
     She pulled the pack from my pocket and tucked a cigarette between my lips.
     "Success!"
     I stopped her before she made a go for the Zippo.
     I torched the cigarette myself and allowed it to dangle from the corner of my mouth. I removed my jacket and pushed my t-shirt sleeves up on top of my shoulders.
     "Shall we try a different song then?" I suggested.
     She gave a half-hearted broken smile.
     "I'm not going to get any better."
     "Nonsense. Everyone gets better with practice."
     "Lee."
     "Nin."
     "I have no musical talent or ability. It's just who I am."
     "I'll teach you 'Blitzkrieg Bop'," My teeth locked.
     Nin guffawed, "That's the plea of a desperate man."
     "We'll try a different instrument. Drums? Bass? Guitar--no, we've tried guitar-- Piano? Harmonica?" I scanned the room for any instrument in sight.
     "Why do you want this for me so bad?"
     "Trying to find something that makes you happy."
     "But why this? Why does it have to be this? Why are you persistent about this?"
     I shrugged, "Dunno really. It's the thing that makes me happy--only thing that makes me happy--only thing that I could suggest."
     I took the guitar from her and set it on a stand. I flicked cigarette ash onto the carpet.
     I was suffocatingly disappointed for reasons that I couldn't put my finger on and Nin's lack of self-fulfilling pleasure had somehow seeped from her to become my own.
     Her eyes followed me as I crossed the room.
     "Why don't I play us out on piano," I sat down at the piano. The keys were cold and gave my fingers the impression that they were suffering a fever. A flu-like chill swept through me. I shivered.
     Nin sat beside me on the bench; I slid to make room for her.
     "Are you okay?" She asked. Her voice was a whisper.
     "Brilliant."
     "Where's your head at right now?"
     "Where it ought to be-- on my neck."
     "Are you angry about the guitar thing?"
     "'Course not. Why would I be?"
     "I don't know. You just seemed disappointed."
     "If I'm disappointed in anything it's me. I was trying to make you happy which defied the point in me bringing you here. I was hoping that I would luck out and your happiness would be my own but alas that would be too easy-- won't give up, though."
     "Is it because you want my happiness to be your happiness so that you have someone to relate to?"
     "Ah-- you have me in for analysis."
     She stole the cigarette from my lips and took a drag.
     I lifted my chin and sniffed, "Deplorable."
     "I'm actually starting to believe that you mean it when you say that you like me, Lee."
     Nin dropped the butt into an old beer bottle.
     "Why's that?"
     "Because, despite how painful my guitar playing has been, you haven't told me that I'm 'fucking frustrating' since we were in your apartment."
     "Affection can hardly be blamed. I'm in sore need of whisky."
     She turned her head as though looking for some.
     "Do you have any?"
     "Not in here. You'll find most bands don't have much in the way of 'leftover' whisky."
     "I think that you don't have anything in the way of 'leftover'."
     "What does that mean?"
     "Whisky like water, chains of cigarettes, several girlfriends--"
     "One girlfriend," I corrected. Another shiver shot through me and no matter how much I continued to play the piano the keys did not seem to warm, "Several women."
     "So what causes it to change?"
     "I'm not going to change. I'm quite happy with the way things are."
     Nin stood up and walked over to the couch. She gathered the papers strewn about it into a tidy pile then placed them on the floor before laying down on her back. I was absolutely certain I knew of a particular lump that was jabbing her between the shoulder blades even though she made no mention of it.
     "You seem miserable."
     I stopped playing and pivoted to face her.
     "That's a horrible thing to say to someone."
     "That's just how it seems. Your apartment, your girlfriend, your band and in a bar after your brother died--"
     "You're keen to tell me who I am and what you see in me but you won't let me say the same of you."
     "You told me in the cemetery--"
     "You're scared, Nin," I spewed, "You cashed in everything that you had to come over here to, what? Die? Why? Because you're too scared to see if you can live with a broken heart? Too scared to know that you can both breathe and hurt? Or maybe you're too scared to find out that you'll get over it-- no matter what, you killing us is out of nothing more than fear."
     "Wow, Lee, your tough love speech is deeply moving."
     "Who are you to be so fucking condescending? You tell me that I'm miserable and I act dignified. I tell you that you're scared, which is the truth, and you act like a fucking child."
     "I would participate in this argument if it weren't for the fact that you said 'us' meaning you're coming with me. So, okay, I'm scared, Lee. I'm scared. What's your reason for killing yourself?"
     "I told you that I would."
     "That's stupid."
     "This whole thing is stupid!"
     We stared each other down in silence.
     A slow smooth grin stretched across her mouth, mocking almost.
     "What?"I challenged in fury.
     The grin continued to grow, giving her face the aura of genuine amusement.
     "No, you are," Her voice was quiet; deadpan.
     The tension released and I felt my own expression mirror hers.
     "Oh fuck off," I closed my eyes then murmured, "I'm stuck with a fucking child."
     "You always mumble," She called out.
     I opened my eyes.
     "You tired?" I asked her. As if on mark, she yawned.
     "I hate sleep, anymore," She confessed, "I think too much."
     "I expect I will, too."
     I shut off the chandelier and the room was instantly black. There were no windows and no place for light to creep in from, even the bottom of the door scrapped flush against the carpet and afforded no illusion of an outside world.
     I opened my cell phone to illuminate a path to Nin. I stretched out on the floor beside the couch.
     "Where are we taking the train to tomorrow?" she asked.
     "Manchester," I tried to situate my arm as a sort of pillow.
     "Ah! You're from Manchester? A Northerner like Morrissey."
     "Yes--," I rolled my eyes, "Just like Morrissey."
     "Your blue eyes are skyward so often that it's amazing you know what the world looks like," Nin reprimanded.
     "How did you know that I rolled my eyes?"
     "Intuition," She paused, "Are you nervous?"
     "'Bout what?"
     "Going home. The circumstances."
     My stomach cramped. My skin became cloaked in a fine layer of perspiration, all at once, like being covered with a sheet. Surely I was ill. I had fallen quite ill--or rather I had fallen--was falling and could no longer feel the floor beneath me. I lifted my head and gravity seemed to make it heavy. Both hands reached out and grasped the thin couch cushion; I pulled myself upwards.
     "Lee?" Nin had clearly heard and felt my shifting. "Where are you?" Her hands made a frenzied search for me. I caught a fingernail in the cheek and the ear.
     I couldn't vocalize. She had found me. I removed a hand from the cushion and covered her hand where it was at my face. I slid my hand up her arm, to her shoulder and behind her neck at the base of her head where her hair hung soft and warm.
     I drew my face into the area where I thought my hand to be. Due to a myriad of experience with female anatomy and the advantage of having spent the last several hours studying her face, I knew that my calculations were correct and I was where I wanted to be.
     I moved in closer until I felt the condensation from her breath against my lips.
     "Lee."
     "Yes."
     "Don't."
     I backed away and dropped down to the floor. It was gravity that would keep me there.
     "Okay."
     "You smell like peanut butter and cigarettes."
     "You smell like Spanish hotel soap," I repositioned my arm as a pillow and pressed the fingertips of my free hand against my swollen forehead as if to stave off a terrible ache.
     Spain. That's where I had stolen all of the soap from. The cleaning lady had left her cart out in the hallway and I grabbed as much as would fit in all of my pockets and both hands as I walked by it. The memory itself brought with it all of the comfort of a warm bath. I was happy inside the memory, it was the thrill of minor crime with no worry but not to be caught and scolded.
     It had been a little over six months beforehand but it seemed impossibly far away.
     Everything and nothing had changed.
     Twenty-four hours beforehand seemed impossibly far away.
     I could never get it back.
     "He fell off a building-- a warehouse."
     "Who?"
     "Ian," I closed my eyes, not that it made any difference. It looked the same inside of them as out.
     "Fell?" Nin was alarmed.
     "Yes--fell. Not everyone is as suicidecentric as you are."
     "But how?"
     "It was a party, he went to the roof to get some air, leaned over the edge to be sick...and...fell...or so I'm told."
     "Lee--"
     "Please. Don't. Say. Anything...please."
     Nin was silent for ages. I almost believed her to be asleep until out of the darkness she spoke in a hushed tone.
     "You saved my life tonight."
     The pain again swelled inside my chest.
     "By this time tomorrow you'll wish that I hadn't."
     "I think by this time tomorrow you'll wish that you hadn't as well."
     "You're okay, Nin--we're okay."
     She draped her arm over the side of the couch and brushed her hand against the back of my hand. She nudged her knuckles between mine and tangled our fingers together until they were interwoven. Her thumb gently, rhythmically, ran the length of my index finger.
     "Manchester," She breathed.
     "Manchester," I exhaled.
     "Like Morrissey."
     I waited for Nin to speak again but gave up when her thumb ceased movement. I knew that sleep had stolen her from me. I was dying for a cigarette. I took my arm from behind my head and reached down into my pocket. I paused on my phone, hesitating before pulling it out. 
     I opened the phone, scrolled through my contacts-- stopped on Emily's name, changed my mind and continued down until I got to Ian.
     Ian > View > Options > New TXT Message 
     My thumb crawled the tiny keyboard.

     "Hey. Are you ok?"

     Send.