When She Spread Her Wings

III

EROS

IN THE WORLD WE LIVE IN, people talk and then they forget. Things that aren’t close enough to you, don’t matter after a few days. All what happens next is perhaps encountering a memoir and the thing crosses your mind for a split second, or perhaps it’s not even worthy enough of remembering it. What you forget, remembers someone else. I remembered it constantly, and no day ended without lying in bed and replaying it in my head like a film. I was the memoir. You look at me and you think of it.

Jasper’s bathroom was full of memoirs. The eyes in the pictures stared at me, and there was no way of ignoring it. I wondered whether he felt uncomfortable showering while father’s paper eyes were pierced into his naked body. Let alone the girls he’d take home. But the memoirs weren’t purposed to remind one of dad, it was meant to remind one, especially Jasper, of what he had given. Money. Perhaps the memoirs served as a ‘thank you’ rather than a ‘I still think of you’, because how else could Jasper thank a dead man for dying?

I patted my hair with a towel, trying to get the long, dark locks as dry as possible. The hairs fell in front of my face when I looked down at my bare stomach, blocking me from seeing the stitched-up cut.

            “B-Bree?” I asked hesitantly, where after I waited a second or three. No comment, try again. “Alexa?”

            “Hi,” a woman’s voice replied.

I looked up at the high-end, small speakers on the bathroom’s ceiling. “Can you play Clair de Lune?”

            “Clair de Lune, L. 32 by Claude Debussy is playing.” And just like that, my favourite classical piece started playing. From the ceiling. But I wasn’t complaining about nowadays’ technology.  

I closed my eyes and imagined myself sitting behind that gorgeous piano, my fingers touching those ivory keys, enchanting listeners with the magical etude. Fingers hover above the key, yet you still hear my song. You almost drown in the musical sea, but that doesn’t keep you from singing along. 

All of the sudden, the door flied wide open. My brother’s curious eyes peeked through the opening he had created. “Look at you.”

My eyes met the reflection in the fogged-up mirror. “I’d rather not.”

He came in and leaned against the wall, arms crossed. A little grin formed on his face. Not going to lie, it was hideous, and I hadn’t missed the sight of his face. “You figured how Alexa works.”

            “I’m homeless, not stupid,” I said, looking at him via the mirror. “By the way, who found me yesterday?”

            “No idea.”

            “So basically, a complete stranger took me all the way to the hospital?”

            “Yes.”

            “That’s . . . a not very comforting thought,” I brushed my fingers through my hair, “I think it was a woman. I saw her.”

He shrugged. “Whoever it is, you should thank them for not letting you die on the street. Oh, almost forgot – I came to tell you that you need to be done in five minutes, because then the hairdresser will be here.”

            “What?” I turned around to look at him.

            “Your hair looks like a dead rat.”

            “Your bathroom has a dead rat,” I pointed at the carpet on the floor.

            “See you in five. You better look pretty for her, brother.” Then he just seemed to disappear into thin air.

Staying at his place for at least two days to recover from my injuries did not, in any means, grant him permission to entitle himself with the job ‘mother-figure’. I liked my hair and I loved the fact that people mistook me for a woman all the time. It came with privileges people like Jasper didn’t have the brain capacity for to understand.

I rubbed my face and breathed in deeply, especially when I looked at the clothing Jasper had given me, because he wanted to wash mine. I swear, this is totally your style, he had promised me when he handed me the tight, white blouse and grey, striped suit pants. I dressed myself, refused to look at the silly outfit in the mirror and rushed out of the bathroom.

Jasper was sitting on the couch with his laptop in his lap. When he acknowledged my presence, he curiously looked up, most likely because he was dying to see what I looked like in his clothing. The thin smile explained that he was content with the look of it. I definitely was not.

            “How are you feeling?” he asked.

            “Well,” I started, leaning against the wall, “I think the noun ‘clown’ comes close to describing how I’m feeling.”

            He rolled his eyes. “I meant your injuries, dramatic David.”

            “Pain killers seem to do their work.” I walked over to the couch and sat down as well. Jasper’s penthouse granted me the wonderful view of London’s skyline which appeared to be less bright than Spring usually granted, but perhaps that was because of my brother’s shiny, white interior. His home was like a real-life sci-fi film, comparable to the inside of a spaceship. Especially the Alexa-woman, whose voice came out of nowhere whenever one called out her name, played a big role in that.

            “Don’t you have to go to work today?” I looked at the document Jasper was typing in.

            “Yes,” he didn’t look up from his laptop, “but I work from home today.”

            “But you never work from home?”

            “Told them you’re here.”

I was both offended and surprised. My eyebrows uncontrollably raised into a deep frown. “Jasper, I don’t want you to take care of me like that. I’m twenty-two, not twelve.”

            “Why can’t you just bloody thank me for the things I do for you, for god’s sake?” All of the sudden, his voice became a lot deeper and colder, violently pushing me into an eye-to-eye moment with Jasper’s shadow. The silent and almost non-existing side he carried with him every single day, until his brain started shunting blood away from his gut and towards his muscles, his body temperature rose and his skin perspired – he had gotten angry.

A man who claims not to be like them, yet walks away with his fists clenched. Hypocritical events create his gem, until guilt will have him drenched.  

Cautiously, I sent him a surrendering signal by slowly raising both my hands. “You know I’m thankful for what you’re doing, but I just want you to stop worrying this much.”

The attempt to bring serenity didn’t quite work out as I had hoped – the red, bloody veins in my brother’s eyes became more visible per passing second. “I worry because you don’t. You live in some sort of fantasy world in which you will survive every wave, Eros, but that’s not reality.”

I kept my mouth shut.

            “You know what’s reality? Harsh f*****g reality? Your homeless brother also hanging himself and finding him dead with a rope around his neck after looking for him for hours. The smell of a dead, rotting corpse, that’s f*****g reality.”

Jasper certainly didn’t forget. And I, once again, was the memoir. I knew that he had pierced his eyes into me and relived the horrendous moment again. He saw my green eyes, and he saw his too.

            “I’m not our father, and there is no such connection between the reason you’re angry and what you just said,” I responded calmly, even though my heart was madly beating, “you only said that, because it serves as food for you anger. Don’t let it eat you up, Jasper, you know what will happen if you let it take control.”

The monster inside of his soul did not plan on leaving, but Jasper knew how to tame it. He rushed towards his room, leaving nothing but a soft breeze as he passed me. What frightened me was the fact that the young man was always angry, and it had been growing.

Someone rang the doorbell.