Young Widow
Statement of Charnel Bisset, regarding a regrettably successful courtship with a pretty young widow. Original statement given April 28th 2017. Audio recording pending.
Your girl at the front is gorgeous. I got a name out of her, Rosie something, with barely a wink and grin. If I’d actually put the effort in, I’d have her number and a time to meet tonight. It’s still so easy for me, even now. Wasn’t even trying--another bedmate is the last thing on my mind--but still it’s second nature. Considering how I've made half my yearly savings, it becomes habitual.
I should explain. First thing, the name’s fake. You won’t find me on social media unless someone took a shot while I wasn’t looking. You’ve got to be careful in this age when you do what I do; you can’t risk one girl finding out her Romeo’s out with another Juliet. Especially not when they’ve got money on their side, which my girls always have. To be honest, half the girls are my mother’s age. Diamond-studded wives, divorcees, and—my favorite until recently—widows. God bless the widows.
Not the weepers, mind. I’m not that kind of parasite, at least, latching onto some poor old bird mourning her lifelong love gone to Heaven ahead of her. Between feeling particularly nasty and all my charm drying up in the face of their bloodshot tears and silver hair, well, it’s not worth the bother of playing Prince Charming.
No, my favorite are the ones who married some wealthy old prick to live her life as an accessory for him to wear on his arm or his knob. At least until the next pretty young thing comes along, cue divorce, a harvest of assets, and all that tabloid crap. But the widows are the ones who won the lottery—coming in at the tail end of the elderly beau’s life, ready for when he heads into the dirt while she’s still young and can spend all the goodies he left in the will on whatever she likes. Designer labels, designer dogs, designer men.
Case in point, me. Now, I’d like to think I’m not vain. But I’m also not into playing dumb about the obvious. I’ve been stopped on sidewalks more than once, asking if I’m this actor, or that model. I’ve got a hell of a good look. I keep it maintained and I deserve to not only admit it, but to utilize it. Same as those pretty things who hitch their lovely underpaid selves into the classic couple mold. Work with what you’ve got and all that.
Now, officially, my income comes from my work as a personal trainer. One who has a client list full of deep-pocketed Misses and Mrs. Yeah, I know, the cliché—but it’s cliché for a reason, isn’t it? Same as the philanderer hopping between lovers behind their backs. Been told a hundred times. I’d probably be alive to tell it a hundred times more if not for her.
I’m sure she told me her real name at least once. I’m positive. But I can’t remember it. The name I do remember is the one she told me she invented: Ariadne.
I was on a date when I first saw her. Dinner with Joanie or Janey what's-her-face. I was nodding along to some tepid talk about her Pekingese, praying for wine and dessert and the usual vanilla roll in her Chanel sheets, and then, suddenly, there she is. She just breezes by, snags my peripheral, and I damn near wrench my head around trying to follow her progress.
Joanie-Janey made some crack about not spraining my neck. I apologized and said I could have sworn I recognized the girl.
“What girl?” said Joanie-Janey. Surprised, not irritated. Like she hadn’t seen anything worth glancing at.
“Her,” I say, nodding at the table where Ariadne was sitting.
Really, she was hard to miss. You don’t see a ton of catwalk-wispy bleach blonde black girls waltzing around in antique silk evening gowns. The sort of thing you’d see Marilyn Monroe sashaying in once upon a time. I remember thinking she must be waiting for someone. Some capital D Date, ready for a proposal or an anniversary or suchlike. Or else she really was someone famous; some starlet or other. But no one else had looked at her yet.
No one besides the waiter who nearly sprinted to her booth. That man looked like he was two minutes from a proper heart attack. Bug-eyed, sweating rivers into his good black suit as he nodded like a string was stuck to his head while she perused the menu. I noticed a rock sparkling like a crystal torch on her wedding finger. Must be a regular visitor, I decided. Someone important’s fresh young wife.
“You don’t think she looks familiar?” I said to Joanie-Janey. Tried to say, anyway. I think I was babbling at that point, just making conversation noises. Like part of me was focused on saving face, but the rest of me was rapidly losing the will to care. I still hadn’t turned back around. Hadn’t even put down the fork with a chunk of triple-digit steak going cold on the tongs. I just stared at Ariadne sipping from her glass and thumbing through a book.
Finally, Joanie-Janey got annoyed. Made annoyed sounds, at least, enough that I finally resumed picking out words. I’ll spare you the details. Short version, she got ticked at my obvious ogling, I was dutifully chagrinned, I thought Mystery Girl was some actress and I was trying to weigh the pros and cons of sneaking close enough to bug her for an autograph, ha ha. And, because I’m me, Joanie-Janey swallowed it. That’s another thing no one likes to acknowledge, especially the ladies—they’re no less stupid than men are when they’re hearing lies from a pretty face. The issue is, there’s so few pretty men in most girls’ lives, they don’t know how much of a sucker they are when they meet the real thing.
Anyway. Dinner went on. We got to dessert and wine, all out of Joanie-Janey’s purse. And the whole time, I’m straining not to twist around again. I couldn’t even taste anything I was so focused on not looking. Ultimately, I crack—say I’ve got to use the facilities, back in a minute. So I get up, I turn, and…
She’s gone. Disappointment hit me in the gut like an anvil. Still, I trudged off to pretend to void my bowels. But as I dip into the alcove where the restrooms are, the gut punch reversed and turned into pure ecstatic butterflies. Because there's Ariadne. Waiting.
Up close, I’ll admit she wasn’t traditional movie star glamorous in the face—not homogenized, I should say. She was beautiful in that way that’s recognizable; not just one of a thousand interchangeable Barbie dolls. I thought she really must have been a model. Fashion show skinny, sharp features, eyes like chunks of volcano glass. Looked a bit like Anok Yai apart from the hair. I'll admit to gawking at her for a good minute in full idiot silence.
And, of course, at that damned wedding ring. It twinkled in my eyes like a stoplight. Because it wasn’t diamonds in it, but rubies. Rubies and black stones. The band was fashioned in the shape of dainty spider legs.
I tried to say something; some opening line from the stash I keep in my mental catalogue. I’d barely opened my mouth before—
“No.” She smiled as she said it. “That’s not how it works.”
“Not how what works?”
“You know what, Beau.” I had been calling myself Beau with Joanie-Janey. Had she overheard? Ariadne kept going, still smiling. “I’m not interested in suitors who bring nothing to the table. You have a pretty face and pretty patter and nothing else. The man who gave me this,” she tilted her hand a delicate increment, enough that the gemstone spider flared, “had it made from his own mother’s necklace and used his wife’s earrings for the metal. He put real artistry into it when he proposed. As much as my wife before him did when she broke her ex-wife’s hand ripping the engagement ring off her to give to me.”
She sighed then. Dreamily or simply bored.
“It’s so easy to get the things I want in life, Beau. It's all so easy when you pull so many strings. But it does go a bit stale. You run out of surprises. Thrills. The romance just fades out of things. It really means something when you leave it to others to get inventive, go their own route, really try to imagine and impress. Not that you’d know anything about that, would you? Under all the muscle and good cheekbones, you’re just like so many other grunting hogs, hunting for gratification and a stroked ego. Where most men only fantasize about your kind of debauchery, you live the dream, flashing your teeth and flexing in the mirror, assured that you’ll never run out of admirers to swoon over you and pay you for the gift of acting charming in their direction." Her tongue clicked and a sigh broke through her lips. “God, but your sort is tedious.”
She lost her smile then, frowning at her ring. Seeing this filled my heart with crawling, biting things, the meat of the organ dying as she looked away from me, already disappointed. It felt like I’d loved her all my life and had just been rejected at the altar. Honest to God, I felt tears coming.
“What would it take to change your mind?” I said. I must have said it, because she looked back at me. Not smiling, but not frowning either. Considering. Hope surged up my throat like bile.
“Surprise me. Do something worth my attention and maybe,” she seemed to think, “maybe I’ll let you see me after tonight.”
That was all it took. Just that one little chance.
I told her what I would do. What I would bring to her if I could see her again tomorrow. She told me she’d know if I got her gift through less interesting means—if I tried to cheat. I believed her.
And that’s why, after taking Joanie-Janey home, giving her the usual pipe cleaning, and letting her fall asleep, I added theft to my healthy list of sins.
The next day, I met Ariadne in a park. She was reading under a tree. This time she looked like a fashion ad from the 1950’s. Cream-colored sundress, picnic setup, the lot. I came to her with my offering.
It was Joanie-Janey’s most prized treasure from the hoard in her jewelry chest, a genuine custom-order Harry Winston pearl set. A necklace, earrings, and bracelet, all still in their velvet box. The first gift she ever got herself after her husband passed away. A sign, she said, that her real life was beginning, that she would never have to smile at his raisin hands and worse appendages ever again. It was important to her. She’d miss it.
Ariadne knew it, too. I didn’t know then how she could, but I knew she did. It was meaningful. It was worth her time. Her obsidian eyes glittered. Almost as bright as her wedding ring. A new one—fittingly enough, another pearl. Perfect as an egg.
“Put them on me,” she said. The gift was accepted. I was accepted with it.
I’ve enjoyed my share of recreational couples’ activities that go up the nose or in the veins before. I’ll tell you now, none of them hit so sweet and horrible as following her orders. As just sitting there under that tree, staring at her in stolen pearls as she read. It was this massive doorstopper thing, an anthology of ‘weird tales.’ She was reading one called, “The Spider,” by Hanns Heinz Ewers about a man obsessed with the girl in the window across from his room.
On the nose, isn’t it? I think I even thought as much during the ‘date.’ But I didn’t care. Not even when the blanket started crawling with spiders. Not even when they climbed up my arms and over my legs and along my face. Not even when she opened the picnic basket and pulled out a jar with something silky and pulsing inside and placed it in the branches. Where it grew. And grew. It was still growing when she told me she was leaving.
“Surprise me again,” she said, “and you can see me tomorrow.”
Details happened. The next day I had Kathleen’s first edition of Arthur Machen’s The Great God Pan and her Tiffany emerald choker set in it like a bookmark. I’d even wrapped it in her best Prada scarf, mint green.
All these I brought to Ariadne outside an enormous old theater where well-dressed couples were filing into a production of Doctor Faustus. She was dressed to match her gifts again. A vision in green, an emerald ring on her finger.
“Lovely,” she said, beaming at the book as she allowed me to slip the choker and scarf around her neck. “I’ll have something to do in the dull exposition bits. Mm,” she hummed at the sight of me. I hadn’t thought to dress up for the occasion. “You’ll have to change.”
She barely had to glance at the back of the line. There was a straggler couple coming up the way—
“No one will notice.”
—and I did what I needed to. The old man went down easier than his wife. She got a good scratch in by my eye, right before her grey head met the greyer sidewalk. People just walked around us. Didn’t even look when I stripped and got my new suit on. A surprisingly decent fit, even if it did smell like granddad cologne. As a bonus, I relieved the crone of her assorted rocks and precious metals.
“Oh, Kris,” what I had told Kathleen to call me, “how thoughtful. It really means something, you know, when a body goes beyond what’s expected. Thank you. Just for that,” her smile glistened and something awful twitched sharply behind her teeth, “you can call me Ariadne.”
I could have cried. I did cry. Quietly though, to not disturb the performance and our fellow theatergoers. Ariadne politely informed the people in the best box that she and her companion—Me! Me!—had the box reserved. The people politely left and never came back. Ariadne read her book on and off. She glowed when Faustus got dragged off to Hell. I asked her if the play was a favorite.
“A recent favorite, yes. It reminds me of an old man I know who doesn’t know what’s coming to him.”
“What’s coming to him?”
“What he deserves.” She touched my arm. My skin filled with crawling. “Do you want to see me tomorrow?”
Of course I did. Of course I knew how to make it happen. Better yet, I knew how to wring even more approval out of her. Go above and beyond. Really try to put an effort in. ‘It’s the thought that counts,’ taken to its logical extreme.
So I thought at the time.
The courtship evolved quickly after that. Jewelry became the least of it. Even the pricy vintage stuff like clothes, books, and baubles—she actually squealed when I brought her the gilded rotary phone I lifted off one of the better antique shops—were secondary to how it was acquired. If it came with people hurting from it, physical or otherwise, being afraid as my professionally maintained fists came at the ones who would stop me, well, that was the extra touch that meant so much.
“Keep at it like this,” she said, “and people will think you’re after my hand, Marcus.”
I realized I was. And why not? Why else would I put so much into a courtship unless I meant it? Why narrow all my world and thoughts and sanity down to pleasing her, scrabbling to be worthy of more and more of her time, if not to make things official?
A ring. I would have to get her a ring.
It was all I could think of on our last date in public. We were at a café, eating outside. My mind was in a fairly fractured place by then. Swinging back and forth between ecstasy and pure ball-shriveling terror at what had happened—what is still happening—to me. There were spiders all over my meal and swimming in my soda. I ate and drank them out of politeness, or maybe absentmindedness. Could be because she wanted us to have the silhouette of a normal couple. I don’t know.
All I knew was that I needed to get her a ring worth proposing with and a worthwhile gift to tether it to. I guess I was an easy read.
“It won’t last, you know.”
“What?”
“Our marriage. Coupling. Whatever you want to call it.” She sighed and looked at her current ring. A fire opal. “They never do. Some I may even have enjoyed stretching out. But nature overrules all things in the end. And it is in our nature not to let our lovers reach the honeymoon phase.” The ghost of her smile dented. On my plate, the spiders turned to look at her. One of the larger ones skittered over to lay a consoling leg on her knuckle. There-there. “Even with so much company, so much family and friendship, you still wish for that myth of the significant other. But mates go so quickly. Men, women, everyone in-between. There and gone.
“So you put your interest and care in something else. Something you know will last. Something that can’t be lost to your nature, because they’re too integral. Like people finding love in stargazing, or walking in the shadows of a redwood forest. Or…” here she laughed, and wasn’t happy, “…or in things. Possessions and pets. Puppets. They’re yours, whether they like it or not. Even when they’re with another, when they perform outside the strictest lines of your script, they’re still yours. You have something Other that is Significant.
“I have one of those. A hobby who is a job who is a puppet who is Significant. He will never love me and I will never love him. So he'll stay safely mine. Even now, there,” she nodded over my shoulder, “I have him. Safe but for a wax burn. I think I’ll have him kill the Desolate bitch someday. I hope he enjoys himself when the time comes.”
I turned around so fast it hurt. I'd never taken myself for a jealous type before then. Never had a right to be, considering. But you don’t know what kind of monster you’ve got under your skin until you’re in love and they’re sighing over someone else. Especially someone like him.
Okay, fair’s fair, the man wasn’t ugly. Wasn’t even plain. Had a crap taste in jackets, but otherwise he looked a bit like a cross between an Edwardian scholar and a college punk after too many all-nighters. A recognizable face, spotty with scars, gaunt and haunted with glass bottle-green eyes. A period piece sort. Of course someone as classy as Ariadne would not-love him.
Even if he was already with someone else. Some buff Asian chick holding her hand out for him to take. He winced when he took it, like he was bracing for something.
Then he screamed as the woman’s hand became boiling wax, burning the bastard’s left palm. She skulked away laughing while his eyes ran and he scrambled to make a bandage with ice from his glass and a fistful of napkins. I laughed too.
Something bit me between my thumb and first finger. I looked down. My heart stopped.
A brown recluse wider than my hand was looking up at me. As I watched, it bit again. I wanted to swat the thing away, to stand up, to dial an ambulance, something.
Instead I sat there and let it bite me again. And again and again. Those tiny lidless eyes glared up at me the whole time.
“Oh dear,” Ariadne hummed after the tenth bite. “That’s going to cause some damage.”
“You don’t love him” I strained out after bite twelve, “Why, if you don’t love him?”
“There’s something to be said about etiquette, Harris. It isn’t polite to mock your livestock when they provide such a vital service to you. No more than it’s polite to salt a wound you’ve already made. As to matters of love, well. I guess I only told a half-truth. I have fondness, I suppose. We all do. If only because,” and when she laughed I could see them, I could see those dripping points tucked up into the roof of her mouth, “there is no fear quite like the fear of something that wants you. In whatever way that may be. He Knows that Carlos Vittery got off easy. The worst a thing that hates you can do is kill you. But to be cared for? Needed? Pursued and played with like a favorite toy by the thing that strikes dread in you from its mere existence?”
Her eyes flashed out at me. Every one of them.
“I know what that’s like. You could call me an expert in that regard.”
All her eyes trickled then. Tears and silk oozing down to an immobile grin.
“It is a terrible thing to fear what loves you.” With that, she stood. In her hair, small things scurried and spun and loved her. “Go to a hospital. If there’s not enough left of your right hand, propose to me with your left by next weekend. Do try to surprise me. Perhaps with dinner.”
I told her I would and she told me where to meet her. I will bring her a ring off Bianca’s dead hand. I will bring her dinner.
I know I will, I know I must, I know that once the ring is on her finger and all is official, she will do what is natural for her kind. I pray the meal will do for her what it has done for some lucky predecessors. My fellow hopelessly hopeful suitors, chasing after a suicidal intimacy that nature has hardwired them to attempt. Poor eight-legged bastards. Poor Charnel, whoever he and I are now.
There’s a chance for me, I'm telling myself. A thin chance at survival if I have the blockade of a filling nuptial gift; if the widow is full, the mate lives. Only…
I wonder if she really is a widow. Because I’ve driven past the place she wants us to meet, supposedly her home. Some out-of-the-way brownstone over in Bournemouth. The windows have been curtained each time, but I would swear I saw someone tall peeking through them. Some bloke in a red hat.
Will he be hungry? If so, I doubt bringing Lindsey will be enough to save me.
Perhaps I’ll invite Daniela to dinner too.
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