She looks at me, those clear blue eyes grounding me, holding me to the earth. She is the only thing that is. “Dragos, do you know who you are?”
“No. I don’t.” I close my eyes. “I’m Dragos?”
“Yes.”
I open my eyes again. “That is a stupid name.”
She only stares at me. “I… Why do you think it’s stupid?”
“I don’t know. I only know that it is.”
I feel frustrated, because she’s asking me questions that are ridiculous. My head is bleeding.
“Should get something to stop my bleeding,” I say.
“I need to call the emergency line.”
Something in me knows that’s the wrong thing to do. “No. No. We cannot do that. Because if I end up in the hospital then…” I have an instinct.Danger.“If I go to the hospital they’ll try again.”
“Who?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t know who has tried to do this. But somebody did. I was…” I close my eyes. “I was shot at.” I turn toward her and touch my shoulder. There is a burn mark on my coat, a scorched line that cuts straight to the fabric. “It was a bullet. I fell and hit my head on the curb. They probably think they got me. Because of the blood.”
“Except if they come back to check your body will be gone.”
“True.”
I’m trying to put thoughts together, but my brain is an abyss. My thoughts don’t make sense, the order they come in, the way that things occur to me.
“This was not an accident. I cannot tell you who has done it, but I can tell you it was intentional, and it means that we are both in danger. Because you know me.”
She does know me. I know her. I remember her.
Not her name. But I know she’s mine.
I stand up, because I need to close the distance between us. I grab her arms, and only then do I realize my hands are bloodied. She gasps, like she’s scared of me, and then I look around the room. The room is filled with paintings. Paintings of naked men.
No. A naked man. The same one. Broken into parts and pieces, a close-up examination of him in different parts.
I look at one canvas of a man’s hand curled around a woman’s throat. I stare at the tattooed fingers, and then look down at my own.
This is me.
Every painting in this room is of me.
“What is this?”
She looks around, her eyes wide. “Nothing. I…”
“I don’t know what’s going on,” I say, letting go of her, looking down at my bloodied hands. “Someone tried to kill me. And I knew that I had to go to you, but I don’t know how I knew you were here. Do we live together?”
“No,” she says.
I knew the answer to that, honestly, because she looked so surprised when I came in, and I had the overwhelming sensation that I had been looking for her and finally found her.
But then, I am her muse.
And we…have been very intimate. That much is clear.
