The Salvation Shark, Chapter 46

Jesse

Courtney found a ride downtown and stopped by my place ten minutes after Eva left. If I can stay awake long enough to keep her occupied, Courtney will probably stay at my house tonight. First, she wants to go for a walk. I don’t know who discovered it, but in the back of a building around the corner from my house, there is a set of stairs that leads to a platform that leads to another platform to a fire-escape up a ladder up to the roofs. Eric showed me a couple months ago. It’s ultra-secret, and no one can be told about it that might cause a disturbance. Courtney and I come up her occasionally to fuck while looking over the city. It’s too cold for that right now.

Court is really stoned, so she isn’t hounding me the way she normally does. I keep thinking of the look of awe on Eva’s face when I told her the truth tonight. What would happen if I told Courtney the same thing? One time, Jehovah’s Witnesses came to her door, and she threw hot coffee in their faces. She made a half-hearted attempt to be a Satanist once, but that fell through when she realized she had to do more than smoke pot, watch television, and fuck random guys.

If I showed her–not just told her, but showed her the truth of my existence, what would she have to say? Would she ever talk to me again? Would she laugh and refuse to believe it? Would she turn around and convert? Knowing Courtney, she would want me to use the power I have rejected for so long, she would ask me to use it, and become the king of the world so that she could be my queen.

All my abilities, miracles I can perform, I could use it. I could make them fall on their knees and worship me as a living God. The faithful could rise up for me, warriors for Heaven. They could enthrone me and enact bloodshed on all of this and save all of their souls by giving vindication to their faith.

But in the end, it would be my soul that would be lost.

These are the things that I can never tell Courtney. I could never have a girl that understood my worries, my fears. I could never discuss these things with anyone, so instead I torture myself with sweet, superficial Courtney. I suppose she means something to me, but I highly doubt I mean a damn thing to her.

“Courtney?” I say, breaking the heavy silence.

She kind of falls against me. “Hmmm?”
“Do you ever think about dying?”

She starts to sit up again, but then falls against my side. “What are you talking about?” she asks.

“Dying... You know, ceasing to exist.”

She is quiet for a moment. “I think about it all the time. I can’t think of a morning when I didn’t wake up and wish I hadn’t.” She sounds sad, like I’ve pierced some vital vein. I think this is the closest thing to a real conversation that we’ve ever had. I don’t like the prospect of it. “Why do you ask?”

“What would you say if I asked you to jump off this building with me right now?” I start to get up.

She looks at me, puzzled, and giggles. “Jess, what the hell are you talking about? You’re crazy, my boy!”

“We could just jump off the edge right now, and our problems are over, just like that!” I clap my hands. “Poof! Gone!”

“A suicide pact? How Sid & Nancy!” She gets to her feet as well and runs giddily to me. “Do you want to get a whole bunch of heroin too?” She laughs. “Now that would be a real trip.”

“No, Court, I’m serious, imagine what it would be like, the last few moments of our lives spent together as we plummeted down to the pavement below us. We would be remembered forever as being together.”

She chuckles. “You’re such a romantic, Jess. Are you asking me out again.”

What am I talking about? This flash of combined brilliance, insanity and stupidity. The words are rolling around inside my mouth like marbles. I don’t love Courtney, I could never love Courtney. She’s addicted to addiction. She’s shallow, she’s superficial, she’s stupid. She sleeps with anyone that comes along, and has broken my heart at least a dozen times. I’ve ended three friendships because the guys fucked Courtney.

I don’t want to spend my last couple moments on Earth with Courtney, let alone years. What I want is Eva. A nectar like that I’ve never tasted. I want to climb off the roof, go home and call her I want her to be by my side. If she were there, I could face the destiny the Universe meted out for me. I could beat the Devil. If I were with Courtney, I would only be beating myself.

“I think I’m asking you to marry me,” I say. “I think I want you to be my wife.” Nice.

I don’t think I could have shocked her more if I did jump. She recovers enough to stammer, “You... You want what?” she is trying to smile, but can’t actually fathom that what I’m saying is real. We’ve never talked about anything like this before. She probably never thought about this before. Courtney is a girl I fuck and do drugs with. I doubt I’m any more to her.

“Four nearly twenty-four years, I’ve felt like an outsider, Court.” I say, sitting down on the rubbery plastic that lines the roof. “Everywhere I go, I haven’t known what to do, or where I’m going. My mom hated my dad, I never talked to him. I managed to pry out of my aunt that he’s in some prison in Texas.” At this point, I can’t even look at her. “I was a mistake, an accident of creation, set to drift in life, nothing but a listless stoner.” I manage to pry my eyes off the ground and look up at her. “You are the only person I’ve ever felt like I belong with, I can’t see anything else that I should do. You make me feel like a normal man.”

Take that, God.

Normal man. If I marry Courtney, that’s all I’ll ever be. No destiny, no future, no martyrdom, no end of the world. Live out this pathetic existence and go home where I can be happy. I can suffer through this farce for a while.

They don’t need me, not on this dirt ball. Faith isn’t a fairy tale anyone wants to believe anymore. Who am I to complain about it, either? It’s a fairy tale I don’t want to believe either. People turn their back on me for the ‘scientific explanation’ every day, when the ‘learned’ answers that science presents are just as far-fetched. How did a rat ‘accidentally’ grow wings? How did a fish ‘accidentally’ grow lungs? How did all of this just happen to happen on the planet just cool enough, and just warm enough to let it happen, unlike the planet before and after? How could it not happen anywhere else in a Universe so vast that we can’t imagine? It seems that the only thing we know is that we are still frightened cavemen huddled around a campfire, spitting out our theories on why the sky is making noise. I’m a tired out Messiah in a time when people are finally learning to reject their messiahs. I just want to be normal. I want to be married to a woman, want to have children that won’t have this burden to bear.

“What do you say, Court?” I ask breathlessly.

She smiles and claps. “Sure!” She throws herself on me and starts kissing me. All I can think about is how I don’t love her.

Go to Chapter 47