Chapter 15 - The Man of Wind and Moss

With the help of the BIC lighter, they managed to get a fire going. Marco made a pile of dead branches, and Pansy sat holding Doll to her chest. She had started shivering and moaning and Pansy kissed the top of her head and petted her like a cat. Marco sat with his knees up and on the other side was Sasha who had more or less decided to stop talking for the night.

In the middle of them, the fire crackled and snapped and the pieces of vegetation that weren’t dry enough hissed and popped. Above them the stars had come out in a grandiose and rather impressive display. Marco thought it was cruel. This was a night for marveling at nature and feeling at one with the cosmos. He thought of the shrooms they had but decided against it. Then he looked up and focused on the stars a little closer and his awe turned back into fear. He didn’t recognize any of the constellations. Not Orion, not the Big Dipper, not anything they were used to in that hemisphere. It’s not that he couldn’t spot them, it’s that they weren’t there. It looked random and cluttered.

Across the fire, Sasha looked angry. Her lips were tight, and she stared with furrowed brows at the branches twisting and curling like hot filaments. Marco couldn’t make out what she was thinking. What she might’ve been planning. The strange confrontation at the stream left a weird taste in his mouth. He shouldn’t have pulled at her strings like that. But to be fair, she did stop bringing up the map and the Man of Wind and Moss, and that was a victory Marco couldn’t overlook.

Eventually, Doll fell asleep, and Pansy laid her down and put her head on a backpack.

“I think she’s gonna be okay,” Pansy said with slight relief in her voice. “Her knee is fucked up, but I think she’s getting her strength back.” She dug through her backpack and pulled out a beach towel and spread it over Doll. After a second, she scooted over to Marco and rested her head on his shoulder. He put his arm around her and held her close.

“I’m so scared,” Pansy said softly. “I don’t know what else to do.”

“It’s okay,” Marco said. “It’s going to be okay.”

“Do you think Dean got to the cabin?”

Marco glanced at Sasha, but she focused on the fire. Her eyes shifted left to right, like she was working out something in her head, but Marco couldn’t place what it was, and it put him on edge. It looked like she was doing math.

“Do you think we should’ve stayed put?” Pansy asked.

“I don’t know. But we needed to get Doll cleaned up and this is a better place to spend the night. We’ll find him tomorrow,” Marco said. “We’ll follow the water to wherever it goes.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

Sasha finally looked up from the fire. Her eyes looked at Marco’s and then she looked toward Pansy and then over to Doll whose breathing was starting to sound better. She stood up. “I’m going to do a little reading,” she said. “Give you guys some privacy.” Then she grabbed her own bag, the joint, and the shrooms, and she headed off downstream.

“Don’t go too far!” Marco shouted. “Wait, what are you reading?” But she waved her hand dismissively before rounding the bend.

Great. Amazing.

“What did she mean by that?” Pansy asked. Her head leaned against him.

“She got a new book. I don’t know. She’s been really in her head about things.”

“No, what did she mean by ‘give us some privacy’?”

“Huh? Oh, I don’t know. She’s just going through it.”

Marco traced his finger along Pansy’s arm. He turned to her and softly rested his chin in her pile of hair. He breathed in her scent, painfully and slowly through his cracked nose, and he thought back to when she was naked in his bed. When she grabbed his hands and placed them all over her body. How much he felt wanted. How much he felt loved and needed despite it being a one-off. He was so lonely. That was the flickering sign in the back of his brain. Despite Sasha’s advances, despite everything. That was one he could never shut off. Lonely. Lonely. Lonely. He thought of Monchito’s brotherly advice. What a dickhead. Marco needed this.

“Okay, I think I know what she meant,” Marco started. “I have to confess something. A couple of things actually. And I know that this isn’t the right time, but if I don’t say it now, if I don’t tell you these things now, I’ll never say them.”

“Please.”

She said it with her head on his shoulder, not looking at him. She said it so quietly he wasn’t sure if there were more words coming behind it. He didn’t know how to take it. Please don’t make me uncomfortable. Or please say it, I need to know. Please wait a little longer. Please keep it to yourself. Please speak your truth and unburden yourself so you can be free. Please.

“Paula let me use this cabin because she wanted to help me.”

“Help you do what?” She lifted her head and looked at him. Her chin was out. She was frowning. She blinked rapidly and then rubbed at her nose. The glow of the fire put half of her in orange. The crackling flames mixed with the sound of the stream and a white noise emanated. The woods surrounding them fell still. Marco felt Sasha glaring at him, and he looked over his shoulder, but Sasha wasn’t there. It was just trees. Darkness in between them like pillars of night. He could imagine eyes watching him though. Yellow eyes on a short, pudgy body. Long black arms that wrap around branches and fingers that dangle down like streamers.

“Help you do what?” Pansy asked again.

“I have nothing going on in my life,” he started. “Nothing. I’m a fucking loser, and I only moved to New York to be with you.”

“We all moved to New York together.”

“Yeah, we all did. But I moved for you. And you know that. At least a little bit. And anyhow the cabin was supposed to be a final hurrah. And also my last chance. I love you, Panthy. I love you so fucking much. I’ve always loved you. I know. I know. Let me get through all of this. Since the day we’ve met, I’ve wanted to be with you. In any capacity. In any way that I could. There were a million ways for me to love you, and I did all of the ones I could. And you stayed with Dean and—”

“Marco, stop.”

“Just let me finish. Please. We have something. I know we did. I know that we do. When you would come over, when you would be with me, when we would just sit and watch TV, those were the times I’ve felt the most here. The most found. The most seen. The most present. Like I wasn’t crazy. And I know I’m not crazy because everyone saw it too. And you don’t belong with Dean. He’s a shithead. He’s a bad guy. You should be with me. We should be together. And this cabin was that. It was the final push. My last chance. A fucking half-court shot. And I know this is the most fucked-up way to be telling you this. This is the worst timing ever. But here we are. I love you so goddamn much. And also, Sasha knows I feel this way which is why she walked off just now. And also again, she told me she loved me last night and then we had sex. So now you know everything.”

Pansy stared at him. Her mouth agape. The fire crackled and he could see the reflection of it just in the corner of her eyes. She was mulling over the information. Figuring out what to say. In her face Marco saw all the iterations he had come to know. All the iterations he had fallen in love with. He saw her crying in her dorm after a fight with Doll. He saw her gift-wrapping presents for Secret Santa. He saw her coked out at the club, spinning and dancing and amazing everyone around her. He saw how brilliantly she engaged with others, how she stood up for herself, how something inside of her, just like Marco, needed to be loved by someone else entirely. He saw the daughter she was, the sister she was, the mother she will be, but past all of that he saw someone fighting tooth and nail not to be another passive observer of life. She was stitched together with bold choices and bold desires and if her wish went unfulfilled, she doubled down the next time to get more than she could ever need. Ingest more than she could ever handle. For Marco to be loved by her would mean that among everything that Pansy wanted and obtained, Marco was right there front and center. Seen. Discovered. Found.

“I think I need to be alone right now.”

His heart sank.

“That’s it?”

“I want to be alone right now.”

“Pansy. Please. You have to tell me you feel the same. You can’t lie to me and say you don’t feel something between us.” He tried to look her in the eyes, but she kept her face downward towards the fire and towards Doll and her shoulders grew rigid. She pulled her hair back behind her ears in an anxious, repetitive gesture. “Pans, say something.”

“I want to be alone right now. I just said that. I said I want to be alone.”

“Okay.” Marco wiped the flop sweat away and stood up. He didn’t realize how much he was perspiring. How clammy he felt. Pansy kept her eyes on the fire. Then she pulled in her knees and rested her chin on them. He thought about saying something else but decided to keep quiet. There was nothing else to say. Not really.

When he first stood up, he had the urge to go find Sasha and shake her. Throw her to the ground and cover her with mud. Cuss her out for putting him on the spot before he was ready. For undoing all his hard work. Where the fuck did she go? Where did that weaselly little bitch go? And what was she READING? He moved down the stream and tried to turn the stomping of his gait into a less threatening stroll, but he couldn’t help it. His heart was racing. He felt humiliated. The last he saw, she grabbed her things and went along that way—or was it over there?

“Where are you?” he whispered. “You got what you wanted.”

Where did she go?

“Sasha!” he shouted.

When I find you.

But as he walked away and Pansy and the fire grew smaller behind him, he had a different want. He wanted Sasha to stay out there. Lost. Unable to find her way back to their campsite. It’ll serve her right, he thought. But the cruelty of the thought made him uneasy. No, he didn’t want that either. And when tears filled his eyes and the full shroud of embarrassment rested on his shoulders, he didn’t know what he wanted. He wanted to die. He wanted to atomize. He wanted to undo everything and rewind the clock. He sat down near a tree, far from the fire, and listened to the sound of the woods. Listened to the wind through the tops of the trees. What did he want? What did he really want? Oh, that’s it. He wanted to sleep. That’s all. He just wanted to sleep. Then he wanted to wake up. And then he wanted to go home.

* * *

He woke to the sound of crying. It was Pansy. Before opening his eyes, Marco knew that Doll was dead. It was all in her voice. A cooing, small kind of begging. “No, no, no, please, no.” He opened his eyes and saw her trying to wake her sister up. Pulling at her shoulders and smacking her cheek. Marco climbed to his feet and tried to move his neck, stiff and tense from the night. He took a few steps towards the scene. In the early morning light, everything glimmered with dewdrops, everything had the faintest blue tint. The fire had gone out and all that remained was a pile of ash. Pansy was on her knees pleading for Doll to wake up, but it wasn’t happening. Doll’s face had gone gray, her eyes half-open like she was forever drowsy.

Sasha walked into view and looked over her shoulder back at Marco. There was some exchange there. Where have you been? Something about how this could’ve been avoided. You’ll never guess. Something about how this was Marco’s fault too. You’ll see later. She went over to Pansy and crouched down and held her close.

“I don’t understand,” Pansy said. “This happened so fast it doesn’t make sense.”

“I know, honey,” Sasha said, rocking her back and forth.

“She wasn’t sick yet. We stopped the bleeding. I don’t understand.”

Marco kept his distance. Everything Pansy was saying—kept saying—was true. Everything had happened so fast. Unnaturally fast. From the moment they stepped out of the cabin, Keith had died, Dean had disappeared, and now Doll was gone. Then there was the crazy hunter, the confusing map, and the mysterious stream. And why did he feel like he was being watched? He scanned the tree line beyond the water. He thought he could see a face there, made up of negative space, only outlined by branches and what wasn’t there.

“Honey, we have to keep moving,” Sasha said. Pansy looked up at her, confused.

“Where? Why?” Pansy asked. “Where do we have to go? What’s the big rush? Huh? Can’t I sit here for a bit? Can’t I fucking sit here and process this for five fucking seconds?”

Sasha backed away and the three of them did just that. Marco tried to put his hand on Pansy’s shoulder, but she quickly slapped it off. After a while they buried Doll and marked it with a pile of stones and then they followed the stream. In two hours, they were out of the woods and back at the lot and Sasha’s Nissan was sitting pretty and Dean’s truck was there too.