Sharp_Objects

a bar for slaughterers.
    “You’re so beautiful,” John said.
    “So are you.”

    J ohn fumbled with his keys in the parking lot, handed them to me easily when I told him he was too drunk to drive. Not that I was much better. I steered him blurrily back to Meredith’s house, but he just shook his head when we got close, asked if I’d drive him to the motel outside town lines. Same one I’d stayed at on my way down here, a little refuge where one could prepare for Wind Gap and its weight.
    We drove with the windows down, warm night air blowing in, pasting John’s T-shirt to his chest, my long sleeves flapping in the wind. Aside from his thick head of hair, he was so utterly bare. Even his arms sprouted only a light down. He seemed almost naked, in need of cover.
    I paid for the room, No. 9, because John had no credit cards, and opened the door for him, sat him on the bed, got him a glass of lukewarm water in a plastic cup. He just looked at his feet and refused to take it.
    “John, you need to drink some water.”
    He drained the cup in a gulp and let it roll off the side of the bed. Grabbed my hand. I tried to pull away—more instinct than anything—but he squeezed harder.
    “I saw this the other day, too,” he said, his finger tracing part of the d in wretched, just tucked under my left shirtsleeve. He reached his other hand up and stroked my face. “Can I look?”
    “No.” I tried again to pull away.
    “Let me see, Camille.” He held on.
    “No, John. No one sees.”
    “I do.”
    He rolled my sleeve up, squinted his eyes. Trying to understand the lines in my skin. I don’t know why I let him. He had a searching, sweet look on his face. I was weak from the day. And I was so damned tired of hiding. More than a decade devoted to concealment, never an interaction—a friend, a source, the checkout girl at the supermarket—in which I wasn’t distracted anticipating which scar was going to reveal itself. Let John look. Please let him look. I didn’t need to hide from someone courting oblivion as ardently as I was.
    He rolled up the other sleeve, and there sat my exposed arms, so naked they made me breathless.
    “No one’s seen this?”
    I shook my head.
    “How long have you done this, Camille?”
    “A long time.”
    He stared at my arms, pushed the sleeves up farther. Kissed me in the middle of weary.
    “This is how I feel,” he said, running his fingers over the scars until I got a chill of goosebumps. “Let me see it all.”
    He pulled my shirt over my head as I sat like an obedient child. Eased off my shoes and socks, pulled down my slacks. In my bra and panties, I shivered in the frosty room, the air conditioner blasting a chill over me. John pulled back the covers, motioned for me to climb in, and I did, feeling feverish and frozen at once.
    He held up my arms, my legs, turned me on my back. He read me. Said the words out loud, angry and nonsensical both: oven, queasy, castle. He took off his own clothes, as if he sensed an unevenness, threw them in a ball on the floor, and read more. Bun, spiteful, tangle, brush. He unhooked my bra in front with a quick flick of his fingers, peeled it off me. Blossom, dosage, bottle, salt. He was hard. He put his mouth on my nipples, the first time since I began cutting in earnest that I’d allowed a man to do that. Fourteen years.
    His hands ran all over me, and I let them: my back, my breasts, my thighs, my shoulders. His tongue in my mouth, down my neck, over my nipples, between my legs, then back to my mouth. Tasting myself on him. The words stayed quiet. I felt exorcised.
    I guided him into me and came fast and hard and then again. I could feel his tears on my shoulders while he shuddered inside me. We fell asleep twisted around each other (a leg jutting out here, an arm behind a head there) and a single word hummed once: omen. Good or bad I didn’t know. At the time I chose to think good. Foolish girl.

    I n the early morning, dawn made the tree branches glow like hundreds of tiny hands outside the bedroom window. I walked naked to the sink to refill our cup of water, both of us hungover and thirsty, and the weak sunlight hit my scars and the words flickered to life again. Remission ended. My upper lip curled involuntarily in repulsion at the sight of my skin, and I wrapped a towel around me before I got back into bed.
    John drank a sip of water, cradled my head and poured some into my mouth, then gulped the remainder. His fingers tugged at the