When She Was Bad

7

Lilith awoke to the hum of the air conditioner. Lyssy lay asleep on the other bed, an open book resting facedown on his chest, rising and falling with every baby-soft breath.

Seeing him vulnerable like that, Lilith was overwhelmed by a strange new sensation, a feeling of tenderness so intense it was almost painful. “Don’t worry, I won’t let anything bad happen to you,” she whispered, unconsciously-or perhaps subconsciously-echoing Irene Cogan’s broken promise to Lily.

Lyssy opened his eyes and smiled when he saw her watching him. “Hi.”

“Hi. Whatcha reading?”

He looked confused for a moment, then discovered the book on his chest. “Something about the Hell’s Angels-I found it in that bookcase over there.”

“Oh yeah, I read that one when I was here before.”

Lyssy sat up. “How long were you here?”

“I dunno, couple weeks I guess.”

“And before that?”

“I joined up with Carson and Mama Rose at the big rally in Sturgis in July.”

“But when I met you, you were Lily, right?”

“How the fuck should I know? When I met you, you were Max.”

Lyssy groaned-more of a grunt, really, like somebody’d just kicked him in the nuts. A phrase he’d heard or read someplace started bouncing around in his head: Don’t ask, don’t tell. But he had to know. “Did I tell you I don’t remember anything that happened last night? Before you came down the stairs to get me, I mean?”

“I figured as much.”

“So where was everybody? Didn’t we have escorts? How come they let us just drive away?”

She sat down beside him on the edge of the bed and rested her hand just above his prosthetic knee; the quadriceps muscle was quivering like an idling engine. “Me and Max, we did what we had to do, Lyssy.” Remembering the terrible gurgling noise as Patty lay jackknifed over the rim of the bathtub while Lilith was washing her hands at the sink-luckily, Lilith hadn’t seen the dying woman’s face. “And if I had to, I’d do it again.”

“I want to know everything that happened,” said Lyssy. “Everything.”

Lilith, singsong: “I don’t think so.”

“Okay then-I have to know.”

She took awhile to think it over. Contrary to Irene Cogan’s opinion-that alters were basically single-faceted identities-Lilith’s personality, less than a month old, was accruing in complexity with every decision and every human interaction, the way crystals magically form themselves around a starter-seed.

Of course, protect yourself at all times was still her prime directive, but she was beginning to understand that sometimes other people’s lives got so mixed up with yours that in order to protect yourself, you had to consider what was best for them as well. Even more confusing, sometimes what was best for somebody might also be hurtful to them. “You’re not gonna go all weepy ’n’ shit, are you?”

Lyssy shook his head.

“And you understand, no matter what happened, there’s no sense freaking out about it, ’cause there’s nothing you can do to change it?”

To Lyssy, that sounded like an equally good reason to freak out. But he nodded and listened, interrupting only twice. They were lying on their backs on the narrow bed, their bodies pressed together from shoulder to thigh. “Kinch,” he said, when she got to the part about Max going crazy with the knife.

“Kinch?”

“That’s who went crazy with the knife-Kinch, not Max. Max would have wanted to kill them slowly.”

And when she told him how she’d hidden Alison from the berserk alter, he broke in to thank her.

“I didn’t do it for you,” she said.

“I wasn’t thanking you for me.”

When she’d finished, they rolled over onto their sides, facing each other. “Is there anything more?” he asked.

“That’s about it. How’re you doing?”

“I don’t think it’s completely sunk in yet-I’m not even sure I want it to.” There was so much to process, as Dr. Al would have phrased it. He missed the Corders, especially Dr. Al-it hurt to know he’d never be seeing him again, and hurt even worse to realize that he’d been at least indirectly involved with their murders. If he’d been honest with Dr. Al about the dark place and the occasional voice in his ear, his surrogate father would still be alive.

But on the other hand, he, Lyssy, would still be locked up, and facing a lifetime of incarceration at best, so what was that all about?

Then there was the whole question of his relationship with the alters. He’d always gotten mixed signals from Dr. Al, who’d tell him in one breath not to feel guilty about the terrible things the alters had done, and in the next breath assure him that the alters were not separate beings, but dissociated aspects of his own personality.

He explained all this to Lilith as best he could (it probably would have been easier for Lily to understand), concluding with the biggest paradox of all: even knowing how their escape had been accomplished, and at what cost, Lyssy told Lilith he couldn’t honestly say he wished that he could take it all back, that it had never happened-not if it had brought him here to this room, to this bed, with her.

She told him it was the sweetest thing anyone had ever said to her. Their first kiss, though it took forever for their lips to come together, had an inevitability about it nonetheless; afterward, for instance, neither of them would recall having intentionally closed the distance between them.