mad, and I ain’t saying I was, then maybe I couldn’t help it.”
“At least you’re admitting it, kind of, anyway.” I laughed.
I pulled away and looked into his eyes. The shirt he wore brought out the blue.
“Why are you so mad, Charlie Hays?”
He hesitated. “Sometimes my head gets all mixed up. I start thinkin’ ‘bout old stuff, jail, and the bad things I’ve done.” He sighed again and I felt his breath on my neck. I shivered against him.
He reached for a cigarette; this time he smoked it without any delay. I let the wind blow my hair wherever it wanted to. I was busy trying to contemplate what Charlie had just told me. Knowing that he had a reliable conscience was reassuring, but it disturbed me that he was so clearly agitated by his past. I wouldn’t have wished that for him, not for anything in the world. At the same time, it also made him seem more human, more mortal, to have a past. While it may have been selfish, I wanted to know everything about him, every detail that had led him to kidnap me.
There was no more caution left as I reached up and traced the outline of the serpent on his neck. I didn’t see earlier how the black outline of the body blended so well with the dark green, or how the eyes were shaped like diamonds and a faded sort of red. He shivered visibly when I pulled my hand away. I saw his breathing increase and the muscles on his neck flex, but he didn’t look at me, not just then, anyway. He smiled weakly instead.
“Yeah, it’s a kinda job killer.” He used his free hand to rub his neck right over the spot where the serpent lay. I suspected something was bothering him again. He seemed self-conscience all of the sudden, wanting to hide away.
I pulled his hand away and laughed. “Well, if it’s any consolation, I like it.”
He looked down at our hands and smiled.
“How long have you had that?”
“A few years.”
“Did you get it when you were in prison?”
I could tell my question took him off guard. Maybe he had forgotten what I already knew about him and our earlier conversations. Or maybe that was just a part of the past he wanted to forget—my constant reminding becoming an annoyance for him. I decided I wouldn’t ask him about prison anymore, because while I had every confidence he wouldn’t harm me, I still didn’t want to risk him losing his temper again and hurt himself or someone else. While we hadn’t known each other long, I could see that it was one of the main sources of his suffering.
“You gotta be a different person in there—lookin’ different helps.”
Not having much to contribute to the conversation, I tried to make it less uncomfortable with humor. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you that appearances aren’t everything?”
He looked at me but didn’t smile. “Yeah,” he said. “You’re right. Sometimes you gotta act different, too.” For the rest of my life I’ll always remember what happened next. Without the slightest hesitation, he turned over his arm and put out the remaining end of the cigarette directly on his inner arm.
I screamed but covered my mouth when I heard the echo of it on the sea. He remained completely calm and unflinching as he damaged himself, really more like some kind of a robot than a man. It was only when he heard me shout that he pulled it away.
“Stop that!” I hit his arm as hard as I could until I was sure the offending weapon was away. Once that was done, I took his arm to inspect the damage. He gave it to me willingly, seemingly unaffected by the burn he had just given himself.
I could see the seared flesh in a perfect little circle where he had branded himself. The damage was already done, the blistering edge of healthy skin sheltering an angry red center. My lower lip began to tremble as I looked closer at the burn and all the rest that surrounded it. Placid white scars ran up and down his arm as evidence of his self-abuse. I could only guess how old some were. What was upsetting was how easily I could imagine him doing that to himself in an attempt to act like a lunatic. I placed my thumb over some of the faintest and smeared my tears that had fallen there.