Just Take All of Me

"I can't believe him."

Sheer trepidation shakes her voice.

"How could I ever have believed him?"

She wipes her nose and blots her tired, tearful eyes on her upturned collar. It's dark outside, dips and depressions line the highway, engine and trailer hitch and spindle clattering as the car passes over those craters. Her eyes used to be full of life, alight from feeling no pain and being ripped and strung out on the extent of her days. Everything is different now, both are enveloped in an aura of fog - or rather, something similar to the smog creeping across the road.

The person in the car behind her honks the horn, the sound peels through the thick air. He only wants her to slow down, milling around her hatchback until his car comes to a complete stop in front of hers. Startled, Haru shifts the gear into reverse and begins backing the car up to make a sub rosa U-turn, but it's so foggy and the frontage road is hard to see.

A.J. gets out of his car and walks to the driver's side, tapping her window. "Haru, please, open the door."

Her tears run in rills down her cheeks, flushed and cold.

"Baby, please, just open the door."

The niche in her heart sears and scorches, her stomach filling with the ashes, the residue, the scraps.

He pulls on the handle. "Please, open the door." A.J. wrenches the helve so hard that the entire car jerks. "Open the fucking door!" Her sobbing sharpens and A.J. can see that he's upsetting her but he's just so angry that he can't control himself. "Haru, open the fucking door! Goddamnit!"

She flips up the lock button and all of the little plastic bars bolt up. A.J. throws open the car door and there he stands, soaked in last night's lounge suit with its dizzying herringbone weave and notched lapel. He seethes through his clenched teeth and mutters obscenities to no one in particular. "Move over." She slides into the passenger's seat and A.J. climbs into the car, slamming the door shut behind himself, loosening up the hold on his tie.

"Stay there, Haru," he says without looking away from his tie, knowing that she has one leg out the door. Quickly she tucks her leg back in and shuts the door. "Why didn't you stop the car? You knew that I was behind you."

"I didn't want to stop. I wanted to get away from you."

"Why? I told you that I was sorry," he replies. She can tell that he has been crying but puts on this mask because it's against A.J.'s nature to cry.

"Sorry? You can't apologize for robbing a bank! Several banks at that!" she shouts. And her voice, sharp like alloy, can be heard amongst the birds, echoing inbetween the trees and stark naked branches.

Tired, he rests his head against the seat. "What do you want from me, Haru? What can I do to make this okay?"

"Take me home," she replies.

"Okay, so we'll go home then." He turns the key in the ignition, revving the faulty engine. Haru puts her hand on his just as he shifts the gear. "What? What is it, Haru?"

"I don't want to go home with you. I want to go home." A.J. knows that she means home, where the air smells of diesel fuel and kerosene heaters are the best way to go, that home. But that terrible gluttonous feeling within his gut stops him from caring about what she wants and what she needs. "I don't know why I ever thought that I could trust you."

"Because you love me."

Because you love me, she thinks. What a load of bullshit. Haru shakes her head, the tears continue to fall. "How do you know? How can you tell for sure that it's because I love you?" She runs a quivering hand through the thick tendrils of hair falling into her face, trying to clip back her fringe with a barrette. "How do you know that the reason why I put up with your shit is because of my love for you?"

He clears his throat. "You wouldn't be wearing that ring if you didn't love me." A.J. gestures toward the solitaire ring, one diamond, wanting to take it easy for right now until he bought another that would blow her mind.

"What? This ring?" She takes if off of her finger and places it into his palm. "I didn't sign up for this. I don't want to marry a liar, or a criminal at that."

"Don't do this, Haru. Please, don't do this," A.J. begs. If there was enough room inside the hatchback, he would be on both knees, holding her delicate hands in his own. "You don't have to do this." He moves closer to kiss her, but she turns away so that his lips just barely graze her skin.

"Believe me, A.J., this is hard for me too." And it is, no doubt about it. Her innards are writhing about, scrolling and snaking around each other and pulling tight, forming a knot within her stomach. The chair is the only thing keeping her from lying in folds and creases across the shifter tray and the leather sure isn't comforting, it feels more like oxhide then anything and smells like year-old repression and salt. "It's really hard to let go of someone you love."

His breathing hitches. "Hard for you? Hard for you!?" He slams his fists down on the steering wheel and sobs. "Fucking hard for you!? You're letting us go as if we were nothing to begin with."

"This is a local road, A.J. Please, don't make a scene, people could be watching," she says without looking away from the window. Her hands are trembling against her thighs.

"Don't make a scene? You want a fucking scene, Haru? I'll show you a scene." He gets out of the car, leaving his favorite fedora on the driver's seat. He walks to his car, hair matted to his forehead from the heavy rain. A.J. opens the trunk of his car and shuts it nearly as quickly, a baseball bat now in hand. He twirls it a couple times in his clammy hands and eventually it comes down on the hood of Haru's hatchback.

She jumps and opens the door just as the bat comes down again, this time on her headlight. Beneath the nebulous light A.J. is obscured, but the red in his eyes is something that Haru can't miss, uncharted, anomalous, ugly. There's nothing she can do to stop him, but then again he can't really stop himself. All of the adrenaline and anger surging from the grip to the barrel of the rounders bat just comes out in consistent pulses, whack whack whack on top of her car.

"Stop it, A.J.! Stop it!" she screams. "Bashing my car in won't help anyone!"

He stops for a moment. "I love you, Haru. Is that what you want? I love you! I love you! I love you!" The bat falls onto the asphalt, rattling and rolling into a puddle. "Please, take this ring. We can go back home and get married and I'll buy you everything you want." A.J.'s breathing hinders. "Everything can go back to normal."

"Money doesn't buy love or happiness," she says. "And money can't always buy my trust."

"Your trust?"

"Yes, my trust. What happened to 'Honesty is the second best policy. Let's tell each other the truth'? You must have forgot to tell me that part about you being a bank robber! What does Gordon call them? A fucking Taker or something?" Soused hair, sopping clothes, she even shakes from the fear and love within her heart. "And what's even more disgusting is that you're proud of theft and assault and whatever else you do."

"It brings in the money," he says quietly.

"Goddamn, A.J.! Being with you is like pulling teeth!"

Pulling cuspids to be exact.

"Why are you still here then!?" He picks up the bat again and raises it above his head. "If you don't love me anymore, why are you still here?"

"I never said that," she gasps. "Why are you always so quick to assume? I never said that."

"You didn't have to." It's obvious that A.J. is crying, there are little splintering cracks across the surface of his heart. "You didn't have to say anything."

She throws her arms out. "I want everything from you! Is that right? I always want something from you! Be it money or time or a fucking manicure!" Haru plods the flooding cement. "But what do you want from me? Damnit, A.J. What do you want from me?"

"I just want you! I want all of you!"

Clearly taken aback, she scratches her head. "What am I supposed to say to that?"

"Maybe that you want me too."

But she doesn't, at least, not at the moment.

So she walks away with her clothes wringing-wet, soul ravaged, drowned in her own pity and tears. All of those scared people, all of that money; banks, credit unions, treasuries. And his house, damn, that house. He owns a beautiful two-story home with lichen flourishing along the brickwork and it looks just like one of those medieval villas, only they didn't have infinity pools, home theatres, and harpsichords. All paid for with stolen money.

Haru turns sharply on her heel. "Let me ask you one thing, A.J." She's yelling because the sound of the rain pounding the flagstone is like bullets. "Did you ever kill anyone?"

He lowers his arms and Haru thinks that he might stop bruising her hatchback, but soon enough he goes back to beating the hood. She turns around again and continues walking, whailing sirens piercing the air from a distance.