Excerpt: Vivisection

I plopped down on the stair in front of the disgruntled-looking Cupid. “I see you’re really enjoying yourself,” I joked. Ruby just looked at me for a moment, but didn’t say anything. I tried to read her gaze, figure out what those hard, green eyes were trying to tell me. But she had me pinned against a wall with her look – vulnerable, exposed, naked. She was trying to read me, too, and we were both trying too hard.
As the next song came on, Ruby stood up, and she put a hand on my shoulder. I felt it there, the weight and sadness of it. And then she said, “Jim, I want to dance with you.”
Trembling, I stood up, and led her the rest of the way down to the basement. At the bottom of the staircase, we stared at each other again, and didn’t move. Then, her pale face glowing in the light, shining with an unknown melancholy, mouthed one word: “Please.”
So I gave in.

* * *

As we walked to the center of the makeshift dance floor, Ruby stopped me. “You have to take off my wings,” she said.
“What?”
“My wings,” she repeated. “When I tried to dance with Dean earlier, we couldn’t, because they were in the way. He couldn’t hold me. So you have to help me take them off.”
She turned her back to me then, and pointed to the clasp where the wings attached to the tiny dress. With trembling hands, I knelt down, and like a husband reaching under his new wife’s wedding dress for her garter on their wedding day, slid my fingers slowly over her bare back and undid the clasp near the straps, first on the right side, and then on the left. The wings pitched backward, and I caught them, the feathers brushing me lightly in the face.
I handed them to her as she turned to face me. I was startled to see tears in her eyes. But I ignored them, as I didn’t know what else to do, and said, “where do you want to put these?”
She didn’t answer me, and instead, walked them over to the stairs, and dropped them on the bottom step, letting them fall lightly, albeit purposefully, to the ground. Then, she came back over to me, and the tears were gone.
"You want to do this, right?”
This time I was the one who didn’t answer. But I didn’t have to.
Ruby reached up slowly, and slid her arms around my neck. I felt her skin brush against the cloth of my shirt, and for a fleeting moment, desperately wished there had been no cloth there. The feel of her warmth, her softness; I coveted and craved it. But I didn’t know how to act; not with this married woman, not with the eyes I knew were watching us in the room.
“Jim,” Ruby said, a tone of disappointment in her voice. “For this to work, you’ll have to put your arms around me, too, you know.”
I laughed nervously. “I know,” I said. “I’m getting there.” I put my hands on both sides of her waist, and slowly slid them around to the small of her back, where they rested lightly, pushing just hard enough so she could feel that I had her, that I was holding her. She shuddered lightly, and took a step closer toward me. There was still a slight space between us – a distance to keep our dancing appropriate in the eyes of these strangers – but there wasn’t a lot. Instinctively, I glanced with nervousness at the steps, wondering if Dean was anywhere nearby.
“No one cares,” Ruby whispered, her mouth inches from my ear. My spine tingled as her breath sent shocks down into the entirety of my body cavity. “It’s just a party. I promise no one cares.”
I pulled her closer then, and could feel the front of her body rest up against mine. The fullness of her breasts, the flesh of her stomach, the strength of her thighs – I couldn't avoid her. In response, I pressed my hands against her back more firmly. She leaned her head against my shoulder for a moment, and took a deep breath. I felt her chest heave upwards, taking in the deepness of the air she was so obviously craving, and then exhaling, as though allowing herself to relax. Then, she lifted her head, and as we danced, she looked me in the eyes.
I couldn’t turn away. I wanted this, sure, but was awkward to be with Ruby this way. It was awkward because I needed her, and by now, she knew it. She had to have known it, or at least sensed some loneliness on my part that she’d taken upon herself to act upon.
“Jim,” she said, lowering one hand to press against my heart. “I shot you. When you came in the door. With the plastic bow and arrow. I hit you hard.”
I nodded. “You did,” I said, and took one of my hands from behind her back to rest over the top of hers.
“It didn’t hurt?”
“It didn’t hurt.”
She slowly slid her hand back up so that it was around my neck, and as she did so, she trailed her fingers along the skin between my collar and hairline. “OK,” she said. “OK. I just wanted to know.”
Ruby rested her cheek against mine for the remainder of the song, and I took in the chilling intensity from her skin. I had wanted this so much. And here it was. I had it. And when the next one came on – another slower song, suitable for the position we were already in – she said, “one more?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Definitely one more.”
There was silence again for a moment, and then, she looked up at me, so fixated on my face that it was as though no one else existed in her large, crowded house – or, for that matter, in her large, crowded universe.
“The first person you saw after I shot you was me,” she said. "You know what that means."
I swallowed deeply. “I know,” I said. “ And of course it was.”
“Of course it was?”
“You performed the act,” I said. “And once you did, I looked at you.”
“Had someone else been standing next to me,” she said. “Another girl. Say, Anne – the girl you were dancing with a few minutes ago. Who would you have looked at then?”
You, Ruby, I thought. Always you. But I said nothing.
“You’re scared because you know the answer,” she said. “You’re scared because you hate that I already have you figured out, and putting you on display like that kills you.”
“It’s not that easy,” I said, glancing around the room. “You’re oversimplifying-”
“-nothing.” She interrupted. “It’s not an oversimplification. It’s plain fact. You feel it, too, and you can’t deny it. Neither of us can. So can we at least just agree that whatever this is is there, and acknowledge it, and go on with our lives so we don’t have to rehash this every time we see each other?”
“I can’t,” I said. “There’s so much I should tell you, things you should know that make this even more complicated.”
“This,” Ruby said, putting her hand against my heart once more, “is complicated because it is what it is. It involves something that’s never going to happen. There doesn’t need to be a back story, Jim. It just sucks, and it hurts, and it’s just going to be that way, and neither you nor I can fix that.”