Die for Me

Tchaikovsky’s music soars from the orchestra pit, while on stage a Christmas party is in progress, with the dancers in Victorian-era costumes.

That we were fundamentally the same, and that in consequence neither of us could ever fully possess or control the other.

I think that this is why she acts up so obnoxiously, demanding my attention at the same time as rejecting it. She knows that I love her, but she also knows that the usual psychopathic love narrative, the one ending in my obliteration and her savage triumph, will not play out. Instead, it seems, we’re moving toward a tentative equilibrium. I know that there’s a place where I can’t follow her. Where she has always been alone, and always will be. I tell myself that I can live with that. That all I have to do is be patient. Be waiting there with open arms when she returns.

“Of course. All the so-called important ones. They’re actually quite funny. All those creepy guys desperately trying to figure us out. You know, don’t you, that all the case studies are male? They just assume that female psychopaths work the same way.”

“They get it wrong?”

“All the time.”

“Give me an example.”

She yawns. “Like, for a start, they say psychopaths aren’t capable of falling in love.”

“And are they?”

“Of course they are. I mean, I love you, baby bee.”

I can’t speak. Oxana reaches out and I feel her hand close over my heart. “Listen to you,” she says. “Boom, boom, boom. You’re so sweet.”

“Why didn’t you say?”

“Why didn’t you say, dumbass? You do love me, don’t you?”

“I… yes, of course I do.”

“Well then, there we go. Now turn over, so that I can spoon into you, and go to sleep.”