HOPE & DEZ

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Nick had no destination in mind. Dark highways, dim streets, bright parking lots: his muscles drove the car while he ruminated.
Why did she always leave when he needed her the most?
Five days ago he visited his father in the hospital, and when he returned to his apartment Hope was gone. So were her rings, her perfume, her shampoo, everything. Like she'd never been there.
This wasn't the first time Hope had vanished on him. She was never gone for long, and Nick never remembered her reasons for leaving. But tonight he was sick of waiting for her to come back. He had to do something, go somewhere.
The car stopped on an unlit residential street. The shapes in the darkness were familiar, like furniture in a darkened bedroom. He recognized the silhouetted latticework arching above the graveyard entrance up the road: the Pear Street Cemetery. He'd stopped in front of Dez's place.
Nick wondered if he really wanted to be there. Hope always came back, but if she found out he'd been with Dez...
But then he was out of the car, walking toward the unlit door of Dez's townhouse. His finger found the doorbell in the darkness. Hope wouldn't find out. And so what if she did? How many times was he supposed to put up with her desertions?
The door opened.
Dez looked better than he remembered. A smooth black dress hung from her narrow shoulders, hugging her thin waist like a socialite cradles a champagne glass. The garment matched Dez's hair perfectly: Nick couldn't tell where one black ended and the other began. Her pale skin glowed faint orange from her tinted lampshade. Her dark eyes were steady.
"Nicholas. I'm glad you're here." Her thin lips barely moved.
"I'm sorry, were you going somewhere? I can come back."
"I am always here for you, Nicholas." She closed her eyes halfway and bowed her head. It was the closest Dez came to smiling. "Come in."
Nick crossed the threshold, stepping into a mist of jasmine, sandalwood and apple. Dez guided him to the couch, a leather beast that swallowed him into someplace cold. He held his hands to the lazy flames in the fireplace, but his fingers did not warm. Dez sat across from him and poured a couple of white Russians into tumblers on the lacquered coffee table.
A couple of sips chased the fragrances and dizziness from Nick's head. The sofa warmed: the beast had turned its belly to the sun. Dez leaned back in her chair, waiting for him to speak.
"Hope's gone," he said.
"I know. Her absence is the reason you are here."
He nodded, unashamed. "And I really need her right now. My job's become dull, a childhood friend just moved out of town, and my father..."
Nick recalled the hospital bed, the sour-smelling food, the young nurse whose beauty somehow made everything worse. And his father's eyes, shiny with pain and fear.
"And where the hell is Hope?" he said. He held his hand out like he was testing for rain.
Dez swallowed. "Hope has left you before."
Nick nodded. "She certainly has. But she was always back in a day or so. Sometimes less."
"How long has it been?"
His glass was empty. "Five days."
"Five days," Dez whispered. She leaned closer, and her dark eyes pulled at him like undertow. "Do you really deserve to be abandoned like this?"
Nick was no fool. He knew Dez carried a dim torch for him, a spot of darkness held aloft in a sun-bleached, shadowless desert. But Nick had wanted Hope as long as he could remember. He loved Hope's smile, her laughter, her bright eyes. She got on so well with his friends, her body moved so easily when they danced. He and Hope made a great pair, but she kept vanishing at the worst times.
Dez, however, would always be there.
Somehow his glass went from empty to half-empty, and his chest warmed. "You'd never leave me, would you Dez?"
Somehow she was beside him, her pale arm encircling his shoulders. "Of course not," she purred. "I am very difficult to lose."
Sure, his friends hated her, but Nick could rely on Dez. She would always be there when he needed her. She would always listen, always hold him like this.
He wrapped his arm around her bony side. That arm went numb, and Nick felt a similar blankness grow in his mind. The little things weren't little. The bricks he felt on his shoulders weren't bricks. They were his bone and flesh stacked upon him, bending him earthward. He had no doubt that Dez would be there to catch him when he crumpled.
Nick wondered why he had no doubt.
Black eels swam in his eyes, blotting out Dez's dim living room. He tried to clear his throat, which seemed to be lined with velvet. "What do you want, Dez?"
Her breath was cool on his warm neck. "I thought that was obvious, Nicholas. I want you. All to myself."
Nick had never gone all the way with Dez, and an important part of him wondered what it would be like. But he was certain that Hope would know he'd done it. And then he would never see her again.
He clenched his right hand, the one he could still feel, into a fist. Something cold touched his fingers, and he turned his palm to look.
The ring. A thin silver band with a polished sapphire. It'd been on his hand so long that he didn't feel it anymore. Until now.
It was a gift from Hope.
He remembered the day she gave it to him. She sent it to his office on a Tuesday, five months from his birthday. She called him to make sure he received it.
"I put myself into that ring, you know," she'd said. "So every time you look at it, you're really looking at me."
Nick tried to remember what he'd said in return. Something stupid, like "Yes, I can see you in it now. You're sticking your tongue out at me."
"I'm doing what?"
He blinked. Dez was looking at him with her head cocked. Orange specks of reflected fire danced in her pupils.
Her fingers paused in their exploration of his ribs. The eels in his vision hesitated.
Nick grasped Dez's cold wrist. "I'm sorry, Dez. I don't think I'm ready to give up on her."
Dez nodded. The eels evaporated and his arm returned to him. "Very well," she said, as though placing a drink order.
"I should go."
Standing made Nick's head swim, and the jasmine-sandalwood-apple mist made him cough. He found his away around the couch.
"I will always be here for you, Nicholas."
Nick smiled. "I don't think you'll be lonely without me, Dez."
He made it to her door, which stuck on the first pull. Nick looked back before crossing the threshold, and Dez was still sitting on that leather couch, orange, dark, sympathetic, consuming.
"Au revoir, Nicholas," she called. "See you next time."
Nick thought of Hope's smile, and how much he missed it. He wanted to fire back with "No, this is our last good-bye," but the words just wouldn't come. So instead he smiled, shrugged, and turned away.
Pear Street was colder than he remembered.