Mud Vein

“What’s MV, Senna?”

I stare at the blood, the part of the V that I smudged with my finger.

“It’s me,” I say.

He tilts his head forward. It feels like he’s lining up our eyes. Truth. I’m going to have to feed him some truth.

“Mud Vein. I’m Mud Vein.” My mouth feels dry. I want to purge it with a gallon of snow.

His eyes flicker. He’s remembering.

“The dedication in his book.”

Our eyes are connected, so I don’t need to nod.

“Would he…?”

“I don’t know anything anymore.”

“What does it mean?” he asks. I lower my eyes away from his, and to the blood letters. For MV

“What’s inside?” I ask.

“I’ll open it when you tell me why the zookeeper addressed that box to Mud Vein.”

The box is just out of my reach. To get to it I’ll have to use something to pull myself up. Since the couch no longer has a back, there is nothing I can use for leverage. Isaac, I realize, is being very strategic. I take a breath; it is broken in half by a sob that never reaches my lips. My chest convulses as I open my mouth to speak. I don’t want to tell him anything, but I must.

“It’s the black vein that curves around the back of a shrimp. Nick called it the mud vein. You have to remove it to make the shrimp clean…” My voice is monotone.

“Why did he call you that?”

When Isaac and I ask each other questions it reminds me of a tennis match. Once you’ve sent one over the net, you know it’s going to come back, you just don’t know the direction.

“Isn’t it obvious?”

He blinks at me. One second, two seconds, three seconds…

“No.”

“I don’t get you,” I say.

“You don’t get you,” he shoots back.

We have resumed our eye transmissions. I’m glaring, but his stare is more candid. After a minute he steps over to the box and opens it. I try not to lean forward. I try not to hold my breath, but there is a white box with the words For MV stenciled on the lid in blood. I am aching to know what’s inside.

Isaac reaches down. I hear the gentle whisper of paper. When his hand comes up he’s holding a loose page that looks as if it’s been torn from a book. The corners have soaked up some blood.

For MV

Blood soaked pages, for MV…

Who knew that Nick called me that, besides Nick himself?

Isaac starts to read. “The punishment for her peace was upon him, and he gave her rest.”

I hold out my hand. I want to see the page, know who wrote it. It wasn’t Nick; I know his style. It wasn’t me. I take the blood-stained page, careful to keep my fingers away from the red parts. I read silently what Isaac read out loud. The page is numbered 212. There is no title or author name. I read through the rest of it, but I have the feeling that those are the words I was meant to see first. Isaac hands me another page, this one with a spot of blood the size of my fist blooming out from the middle of the page like a flower. The font is different, as is the size of the page. I rub it between my fingers. I know this feel; it’s Nick’s book. This is Knotted.

Isaac pushes the box closer to where I’m sitting so that I’m able to reach inside. The pages are all pulled from their binding, lined in four rows. I lift another page. The style lines up with the first book, lyrical with an old-fashioned feel to the prose. There is something strange about the writing, something I know I should remember, and cannot. I start pulling out pages at random. Separating the pages of Nick’s book from the new one. I work quickly, my fingers lifting and piling, lifting and piling. Isaac watches me from where he leans against the wall, his arms folded, lips pursed. I know that underneath his lips his two front teeth slightly overlap. I don’t know why I have this thought, at this time, but as I sort pages my thoughts are on Isaac’s two front teeth.

I am about halfway through the box when I realize that there is a third book. This one is mine. My fingers linger over the bright white pages—white because I told the publisher if they printed on cream I would sue them for breach of contract. Three books. One written for MV, one written for Nick … but the third…? My eyes reach over to the unknown pile. Who belongs to that book? And what is the zookeeper trying to tell me? Isaac pushes himself off the wall and steps toward the pile that belongs to Nick.

“We have to finish reading this one,” he says. My face drains of blood and I can feel a tingling along the tops of my shoulders as they tighten.

I hand him the pile. “It’s out of order and the pages aren’t numbered. Good luck.” Our fingers touch. Gooseflesh rises on my arms and I look away quickly.

Chapter Thirty-Two

We work to set the books in order. Through the longest night, the night that never ends. It’s good to have something to do, to keep you from waltzing down crazy street—not that we haven’t already been there. It’s a street you only want to visit a couple times in your life. We have power again … heat. So we take advantage by not sleeping, our fingers flying over pages, our brows creased with the strain. Isaac has Nick’s book. I take on the task of the other two—mine and…? It seems that there are too many pages to make up only three books. I wonder if we will discover a fourth.

Even as I come across pages of Knotted and hand them to Isaac, it is the nameless book that catches my attention. Each page has a line that pulls at my eyes. I read them, re-read them. No one I know writes this way, yet it is so familiar. I feel a lust for this author’s words. A jealousy at being able to string such rich sentences together. The first line keeps coming back to me with each subsequent line I read. The punishment for her peace was upon him, and he gave her rest.

I don’t notice when Isaac disappears from the room to make us food. I smell it when he comes back and hands me a bowl of soup. I set it aside, intent on finishing my work, but he picks it up and places it back in my hands.

“Eat it,” he instructs me. I don’t realize how hungry I am until I reluctantly place the spoon in my mouth, sucking the salty brown broth. I set the spoon aside and drink from the bowl, my eyes still scanning the piles set neatly around me. My leg is aching, as is my back, but I don’t want to stop. If I ask Isaac to help me move he will guess at my discomfort and force me to rest. I rub the small of my back when he’s not looking, and press on.