The Paper Kingdom

Chapter Nine

I laid in Gerard’s arms after waking up too early in the morning and I was unable to get back to sleep. He was fast asleep, his arms wrapped around my waist, and his lips pressed into my shoulder. I turned, little bit by bit until I was facing him, our noses pressed against each others. His breath wasn’t bad. He smelt like mint toothpaste, a little after-scent of beer. I liked the intimacy, and the fact that I even liked the intimacy was a shock, and it went against everything I really do.

Gerard stirred a bit in his sleep, shifting his hips closer to mine and tilting his head up so my lips were just barely touching his jawbone.

After a few more moments of comfortable silence, Gerard’s voice came to me.

“Good morning.” It was raspy and sweet and had some weird Jersey twist. I moved so we were back to eye to eye, his black eye looked even worse than it had last evening, but his busted lip looked a bit better.

“Morning.” I answered, a bit later, just, examining his face. It was relaxed: something I was wasn’t familiar with. “I like your hair. We match.” I teased.

“I just want to lie here all day.” Gerard mumbled, running his fingers through a strand in my hair, twirling it.

“Want to watch a film?” I asked, looking at his nice television and stack of movies. He nodded and I got up, a little bit of a chill going through my naked body as I looked through the stack of videos, settling on Kill Bill Vol. 1, because Uma Thurman and Lucy Liu are just so awesome in it.

I pushed the DVD into the player and Gerard turned on the television, watching the action packed opening scene of the movie. I crawled back into Gerard’s bed and sat beside him.

“I love this movie.” Gerard said, sitting a bit further up and placing a pillow behind his back for a comfy seat.

“It’s a great movie.”

“The second one is better.”

“Yeah, but the first one is build-up for the second one.” I said, watching the bride get brutally killed by the unknown man with the rings, who, for anyone who knows the movie, knows as Bill.

“I don’t own the second one.” Gerard mumbled. “I got it at a garage sale and they were keeping Vol. 2.”

I didn’t reply, I wasn’t even looking at the movie. I’d seen it so many times, just hearing the audio painted a strong visual image in my head. Except for some reason, I saw Gerard Way as the bride. Not in a weird way, just a connection. Dead wife/husband, and child. Vengeful. A little nuts.

I stayed for the first twenty minutes of the movie, my short-lived attention span eventually kicked in and I walked into Gerard’s closet just looking through his stuff out of boredom. Most of his clothing was black, or grey, but he had a bright blue suit that stood out.

“What’s with the blue suit?”

“I used to wear it at gallery openings. All artists wore black and stuff. I wanted to be different. Do something a bit unusual.” Gerard said. I took the suit jacket off the hook and put it over my shoulders, walking back out into Gerard’s bedroom.

He whistled, smiling at me. “Well it looks way better on you.” I grabbed my underwear from off the floor and slid it on.

“I’ll go make you some breakfast.” I said, leaning over and kissing him on the cheek.

I felt increasingly maternal, going through Gerard’s fridge and taking out some eggs and toast. Then going through the many cupboards finding a frying pan and turning on the stove. His kitchen was homey, with a white countertop and wood cupboards, and a large stove on top of an oven. There was no microwave, probably from that whole scare about microwave radiation causing cancer. I cracked two eggs over the frying pan, scrambling them for just a bit more than two minutes, before putting them on to a plate. I put the toast in the toaster, and stood there, humming an arctic monkeys song, before placing the slice of toast on the plate, beside the egg.

Add a little salt, add a little pepper. Breakfast. Look at me, the little girlfriend.

I brought it to Gerard, who was still completely enveloped in the film. I placed the plate on his small side table, before grabbing a pack of cigarettes that was sitting on the same table.

“Hey, do you have a lighter?” I asked. He didn’t answer.

“Earth to Gerard.” I said into his ear and he jolted back into reality, jumping a bit.

“Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention, what did you say?” He mumbled, his eyes still glued to the screen. It was really sweet, in a way.

“Lighter?”

“Oh, there’s one on my desk, in the first drawer.”

I walked over to the drawer, and immediately found two things. A red BIC lighter, and a black notebook.

Due to cravings and my nicotine addiction, lighting a cigarette was my first priority, but once I’d taken a drag, I started to flip through the notebook. It wasn’t really a notebook, it was a sketchbook. It was all drawings of people, I saw Mikey, David Bowie, Morrissey, and a girl with dark hair in messy ponytails showed up quite a lot. There was her, sitting on the sofa, then her drinking coffee, her drinking wine, her having a cigarette. And then the drawings stopped and it hit me. That must have been Lindsey. That’s why they stopped. He stopped drawing her after she died.

After that the drawings were all Bandit. God, she was cute.

There were 22 drawings of Bandit. Bandit playing, Bandit sleeping, Bandit dressed up for her first day of kindergarten, etc.

And we know what happened to Bandit, so the drawings of her stopped as well. But not just the drawings of her. The drawings were dated. His last drawing was the day before the shooting. He actually just stopped drawing all together.

Until there was a drawing of me. And it was not from since we went to that meeting in Helene’s basement. It was before. It was me having a cigarette, waiting to pick Jamie up from school. I looked really good in the picture. I had a lot more weight on my bones, still thin, but not as skeletal. My hair was longer, and I just felt beautiful. He really made me feel beautiful.

“You drew me? Before all this?” I said, and that drew his attention from the screen.

“You’re beautiful. I knew it then, before everything, and I know it now.” Gerard grabbed the remote and paused the movie, walking up to me and kissing me, as I shrugged off his blue jacket and let it fall to the floor.

He pulled away and just held me in a hug, my head pressed into his neck, eyes closed.

But the second I opened my eyes, I was greeted with that red speck of blood.

“Gerard, why do you have blood on your neck?”

Notes

so this took forever, mostly because i haven't been writing as much

and also because i plotted out this whole story and then scrapped it so i'm just kind of winging it

PS

i saw frank in detroit on saturday night and we met and he hugged me and i think that's love right there