The Heart of the Matter

The Heart of the Matter

By Lindsey Goldstein

Like the smoky trail of an extinguished match, the faint scent of sulfur wasn’t the most striking thing about him. He moved with an inhuman fluidity, like water snaking through a cut canyon or wispy clouds building to a pillowy grey mass in an otherwise azure sky.

           My fingers perched on my keyboard, though my eyes followed his entrance into my office, registering nearly imperceptible movements as he folded himself into a cushioned chair. I leaned back, folded my hands on one knee, and stared into his eyes. Deep pools of ink flecked with gold.

           “May I help you?” I asked.

           One corner of his mouth twitched into an amused smile. “I was just about to ask you the same thing.”

           The laws of attraction should have repelled or attracted me, but I waffled between the two as though being pulled by opposing magnets.

He tilted his head and raised one eyebrow, then shook his head. “Maybe this will jog your memory.”

A disembodied voice, strangely akin to mine, murmured, “I’d sell my soul to the Devil to bring him back.”

I turned my body in my chair, looking for the voice's origin. Those were my words. My voice.

“How did you?”

He splayed his hands to the ceiling. His hair swayed as though a breeze blew. I squinted at it.

“You uttered the magic words. Namely, sell my soul.” He bent his fingers toward himself, examining his nails.

I shuddered, his voice a cold splash of water on my skin.

Out of the ether, he withdrew a yellowed parchment paper. The edges were singed, the handwriting impeccably archaic in its penmanship. At the bottom, a dotted line awaited a signature. Upon closer inspection, my name had been printed underneath. Another flutter of his hand yielded a pen.

“Feel free to read it over. But it’s standard. He’ll return. In exchange, I get your soul.” His eyes flared much like lighter fluid to a fire.

I pulled the document toward me and dipped my head to read. The looping cursive danced on the paper, blurring the words together.

“When would this soul-taking occur?”

His gaze penetrated my mortal shell as though he could see through layers of skin, muscle, fat, and bone.

“When you’re done with it.”

I drummed my fingers on the paper, considering. Until that moment, I hadn’t believed in Heaven or Hell. Certainly, the notion of a soul eluded me. Knowing I had one gave me pause. But to see him again? My wounds had finally scabbed when I’d lost him over a year before. An ache under my sternum, directly under the jagged scar, reminded me they weren’t healed. I pressed one hand on top, straining for the familiar thumping underneath. Nothing. My discharge papers from the hospital only mentioned head trauma.

“How long do I have to decide?” I asked.

He melted out of his chair, standing to his full height. “Twenty-four hours.” As fluidly as he’d arrived, he disappeared, a haze of fog where he’d been.

***

           I locked my office door, crossed the street to my awaiting car, and slid into the driver’s seat. Only recently had I been able to drive again. My chest expanded as I inhaled air into my lungs. With one hand on the steering wheel, I closed my eyes, took one more breath, then started the engine. Almost imperceptibly, the car whirred to life. I was still acclimating to the new car.

           I tilted the rearview mirror toward me to check my face and pupils. Had someone drugged me? What had just happened? Everyone grows up with notions about a soul and possibly jokes about selling it, but no one has ever said it was real. Other than the pink scar on my forehead that I tried to hide under new bangs, I looked fine. I glanced around the car, my skin prickling with apprehension, then pressed start and pulled away from the curb.

           My hands gripped the wheel at ten and two. I scanned each intersection before entering, slowing as I approached even if the light was green. The nightmares had subsided. Instead of every night, I only awakened in a pool of sweat and tears once a week. Images of our car entering the intersection, the blinding light of the other car’s headlights, and the crunch of the metal wheedled their way in less frequently. Flashes of concerned faces, hot searing pain, sticky fingers as I lifted my hand to my face that night lurked in the recesses of my brain but had faded to a blur.

           When I turned into my driveway, I shut off the car and stared at our house. We’d only moved in just before the accident. One light shone dimly from inside since Michael had set a few lights to a timer. I sighed, grabbed my purse, and trudged to the front door. Our garage was still full of items we’d never properly vetted from our separate lives. Furniture, boxes of books, and clothing that wouldn’t fit in our closets waited for me to go through it and discard anything I didn’t want. We were supposed to do that together.

           As a love coach, I’d paired hundreds of couples. But I’d never been able to find the right one for me. The day Michael walked into my office, my senses tingled. I already knew. But ever the professional, I listened to him and his dating woes. And I discussed my process for helping him find the one. Some people had asked if I had a partner, and I generally ignored the question. But when he asked, I quickly told him the truth. The next day, he canceled my services and in the next breath, asked me on a date. We dated one year before he proposed and were married several months after that. The proverbial peas and carrots? That was me and Michael.

           Inside the house, I stopped before his photograph. I’d placed several around. One in the entryway next to a bowl where various keys nestled, including my car keys I had tossed inside. Michael’s smile in that photo was the one he reserved just for me. Almost bashful, boyish, and openly in love. It was my favorite photo. I touched the frame, every cell yearning to actually touch him.

           “I don’t need diamonds. I don’t need pearls. I only need you.” I stared at his face, the words we’d often say to each other tumbling from my mouth. My head hung and I whispered, “I would give anything to see him again.”

           Something near my hand rustled. The parchment paper from earlier materialized. A pen plopped next it. I picked it up, considering. A disembodied voice eerily like Michael’s sighed into my ear, “sign it.” I startled. The scar on my face pulsed, aching. The weight of my loneliness forced me into a nearby chair.

           “I have nothing to lose. I’ve already lost everything.”

           I scribbled my signature on the paper. A flame licked the corners, enveloping it. A few ashes remained.

           I looked around, expecting to see Michael. Nothing. The quiet of the house rung in my ears. A weariness like I hadn’t slept in years forced me upstairs and to the bed. I laid down, incapable of fighting the urge for my head to hit the pillow.

           From a distance a voice called my name. It was so faint, almost as though from a different lifetime. Camilla. Mila. Open your eyes. A hand caressed my face, then pushed the hair from my forehead. A fingertip traced the scar I knew was there. Mila.

           I forced my eyes open. A blurred image sat on the bed next to me, one leg perched at a right angle. The face came into focus.

           “Michael?” I sat up. “Oh my God. You’re here. You’re actually here.”

           Michael leaned down and kissed me. His lips pressed firmly to mine until I needed air and had to break the seal. He pulled away.

           “How am I here?” he asked.

           I scooted so my back rested against the bed frame.

           “I don’t know.” I glanced down at the sheets crumpled in my fists.

           Gravity tugged Michael’s lips down. “I’m not supposed to be here.”

           I leaned over and pulled him to me again, kissing his cheeks, then his temples, his closed eyes. “But you are.” Tears streaked my cheeks as I held him. I’d never let him go again.

           He pulled away and studied my face. “At what cost?” he said, his voice a low rumble.

           I leaned my face against his warm chest, a strong beating emanating from underneath.

           “It doesn’t matter.” I tilted my head, kissed his mouth, the urgency of our kisses building until words melted away in a sea of salty tears, heavy breathing, and heated skin.

           We fell asleep, intertwined. It was the first night I slept peacefully in a year.

***

           When I woke in the morning, her cool skin prompted me to pull the blankets up around her shoulders. When that did nothing to warm her, I tapped her. No response. With a quick roll, she was on her back, a trickle of blood crusted in the corner of her mouth. I whipped my hand to my phone, dialed 911, then held her until they arrived.

           She was pronounced dead at the scene. No pulse. They took her away on a gurney, the sheet pulled over her face.

           After they left, I sat on the bed, still warm from my body and indented where she had been. A feral scream parted my lips. “I’d sell my soul again to have her back. Please.”

           He appeared in a musty cloud of turmeric-colored dust. His eyes showed no emotion, but instead stared like at me like a serpent.

           “That card has already been played.” His face contorted into a gruesome smile.

           “But how could you? I saved her once. I died instead of her.”

           He blinked. “Perhaps the trauma of that evening clouded your memory.”  

           The room darkened as my brain flooded with rage. “One night. Only one night—"

           Practically in a growl, he interjected, “I think you need to count your blessings. And hers. You got one more night. Most people never get that.”

           He disappeared, but his eyes flickered in the haze one more time. “See you soon.”

           The house creaked with the wind that swayed the trees outside. Otherwise, it was quiet. My chest ached. I touched the long, red raised scar over my sternum.

***

Michael and Camilla lay in separate beds in the same room. Camilla’s eyes followed me around the room. I wasn’t surprised she could see me. The doctors suspected brain death, but she was still in there. Michael, on the other hand… he groaned in pain. His heart was figuratively broken with the news of his bride’s state, but it had also sustained such a blow during the accident that his family didn’t know if he’d make it through the night.

           Michael’s mother perched on a chair next to his bed, her hand tightly grasping his. Her eyes searched his face, wondering how she might save her boy, her only child.

           “I’d give anything to save him.” She turned her face to the sky, beseeching.

           I rolled my eyes. Sometimes the answer was not above, but below. I made a note to have a word with her.

           Michael groaned again. His mother took his hand and stared helplessly at him.  

           Camilla whispered, inaudible to the weak human ear, but not mine. “Please. Save him. Anything. I’d give him my soul.”

           “He doesn’t need a soul. He needs a new heart,” I said.

           She winced, her face unable to mask her pain. “Tell them to take mine.”

           I smirked. “You’re not a match.”

           With the last of her strength, she leveled her gaze at me. “Make me a match.”

I produced a paper. She signed without reading any of the document.

           As the instruments screamed the blaring code, her hand dropped to the mattress. I slunk out as a medical team rushed in, ready to prep her for surgery. Moments later, I witnessed her still beating heart slide from her body.

Michael turned his head toward her, his eyes wide. As a nurse pushed medication into Michael’s IV line, I started toward the door.

Michael called to me. “Wait!”

I pivoted on my heel and returned; my interest piqued.

“Take me instead. Please.”

“She already signed. The contract is binding.” I tilted my head considering. “If I rip it up, will you sign instead?”

He motioned with his hand, his eyes already drooping from the medication. A quick scrawl and he was out.

“We’re losing him,” a nurse said to the surgeon. I watched as they wheeled him into the operating room, another nurse following with Camilla’s heart.

           My best attribute had always been patience. I would wait to collect all my debts. They’d get what they thought they wanted. And so would I. Eventually.