“White Knight”

A Modern Fairy Tale

By Alison Archer

White Knight

“Who’s the lucky guy?”

Mia Paris stared at her doctor. “What guy?”

“You’re not sick, Mia. That’s my medical opinion. You’re not suffering from the flu, the croup, food poisoning, or any of the other unlikely diseases you insisted I test for. In fact, you’re not ill in any way that I can spot. All the symptoms point to one thing: you’re in love. Which makes me have to ask, who’s the lucky guy?” Doctor Falconer beamed, as if he’d just told her she was expecting.

“In love?”

“It’s the high blood pressure, mainly,” he said, looking back to her chart. “That coupled with the shortness of breath, loss of concentration—you said your mind has started to wander a lot recently. Add in some anxiety, excessively warm skin, and that funny smile you keep fighting, and I’m left with no other diagnosis. You’re in love.”

Mia stared at Doctor Falconer, clicking her toes together and rocking her head back and forth slowly as she thought. “Is this is a pick-up?” She asked finally.

The doctor threw his head back, laughing deeply from the gut. He shook his head and wiped at his left eye. “No,” he finally managed. “No, I’m not trying to pick you up.”

“So if you’re not trying to hint that I’m secretly in love with you, then I’m stumped.”

“I’ve been your doctor for years, Mia. I know you. You came in here today because you’ve been feeling sick, but I can’t find any signs of illness. You’ve never been prone to hypochondria—in fact, you tend the other way and try to discount what your body tells you. How many times have I made a diagnosis that you’ve ignored? You had whooping cough for six months before you would acknowledge it. I promise you: if you were sick, I’d let you know. But this is different. I have to consider the alternatives.”

“Do I need to see a shrink then? Is this all in my head?”

The man sighed and closed her chart. “You’re not sick. My diagnosis stands. Take it or leave it.”

“But wouldn’t I know if I was in love? Wouldn’t I know who I was in love with?”

Mia returned to her expansive Chicago apartment, 63 three floors up from the busy Loop. After leaving Falconer’s office, she had spent the day alone at Lake Michigan. She had kept her cell phone handy, checking in with the office as she sat on the sandy shore and watched the small waves lap.

She didn’t know what to think, so she started by listing the facts—as always.

First question. Could she trust the messenger? After a good deal of thought, she finally decided that Doctor Falconer was not a doctor, he was a consultant. He was a licensed, trained, and highly knowledgeable consultant, just like any consultant she’d worked with before. His diagnosis was not in fact medical truth, but one man’s opinion. She could take it or leave it, as he said.

And if Mia had been any less shrewd as a businesswoman she would have left the matter there. But she had built her business with the help of consultants and nurtured it through two recessions with the help of consultants. So it was hard to ignore one now.

Clara Elena, she knew, couldn’t stand them. She called them shamans. Clara Elena Chayes was known within the company for her independence—she did not take kindly to outsiders trying to explain her problems to her. She knew them well enough herself, she said, that didn’t need a pack of suits to rob her blind just so they could confirm her gut. That was part of the reason Mia had promoted her to CFO instead of hiring from the outside.

And maybe Clara Elena was right. Maybe consultants were just fortune cookies in suits—expensive oracles. Maybe Falconer was nothing but a fancy shaman who had passed a test or two and wore a stainless white jacket. But that was what Clara Elena would say, not Mia. If experience had taught Mia anything, it was that consultants were usually right. And that meant she could not just shake off the Doctor.

But she wasn’t prepared to take his diagnosis on faith alone either. For a claim such as this one she needed empirical evidence.

She must devise a test. A test that would leave no doubt in her mind.

Her current lover would be dropping by the apartment late that evening. They had scheduled a quiet dinner in, but it would have to be something much more now. Tonight Orlando Ciramella, after five months of making love, would have to prove himself or face the road. If she was not in love with him, she was not going to rest until she found the man she was looking for.

When Orlando arrived that night, the plan was already set.

“It’s unlocked!” Mia called from the leather sofa. She took a sip of wine, and waited for Orlando to try the doorknob. There was a pause and she heard the knob rattle briefly before the slight crack of electricity, and the cry of surprise from Orlando.

“Jesus Christ, Mia! What’s wrong with your door?”

“It’s unlocked,” she repeated. “Probably just static!” Mia checked the voltage meter that sat on the coffee table and nudged the knob to the right.

Orlando reached for the door again, and there was the same snap. “Shit. That’s more than static, Mia. What’s going on?”

“I electrified the doorknob.”

There was silence from the other side of the door. Finally Orlando asked, “Are you breaking up with me?”

“That depends.”

“On what exactly?”

“On what happens in the next minute.”

She heard Orlando pushing on the wooden door, avoiding the knob.

“So this is a test then?” He asked. His voice was higher, upset.

“Bingo.”

“Do you want me to prove that I love you? Do I have to open this door and nearly electrocute myself? Is that what you want?” Mia believed that he might have been willing to do it. But that was not the point.

“You’ve got it wrong,” Mia answered, rising from the couch. She bent over and adjusted the knob on the voltage meter again. Again to the right. “I’m not testing your love, Orlando. I’m testing mine.” Mia crosses the dark hardwood floor to the door and looked through the peephole. She saw Orlando standing in front of her, his figure warped by the fisheye lens. He would have looked dashingly handsome and elegant in his suit, if he weren’t sucking on his right index finger.

“Was it painful?” She asked. “I’m sorry if I hurt your finger.”

“Yeah, it hurt,” he answered, looking into the peephole. “What did you expect?”

“But did it hurt a lot?”

Orlando shrugged. Apparently he’d decided no response was the best response at this point. Mia’s hand hovered just inches above the electrified knob. It’s just an obstacle, she told herself, a momentary pain in my hand. If I can open the door, I love him. Would I do this for someone I didn’t love? Of course not.

Her hand moved closer to the knob. It wouldn’t be much. A tightness, that was all, a desperate clutching that the brain tried to resist. Mia’s hand dropped slightly closer. She was sure she could feel the electricity at this range. She’d shocked herself before once—accidentally that time—in a light socket. It hadn’t been that awful, had it? She suddenly couldn’t remember.

She looked down at the doorknob and then back at Orlando on the other side. Mia’s hand fell away from the knob.

“Listen, Orlando, I don’t think this relationship is working.”

“What?!”

“I’m sorry, but I think you should go. I’ll mail all your stuff to you tomorrow.”

Orlando began pacing, and walked outside of the field of vision that the peephole allowed. Mia almost thought he was gone until he came back and asked, “Is there someone else?”

Mia wanted to explain, but couldn’t find the words. There was someone else, even though she didn’t know who that someone else was. Her silence was clear enough to Orlando.

“Is it Kornelius, that whiny number-cruncher?” he asked.

“No,” Mia answered, although she was not altogether sure about her answer. Keith Kornelius had been her last lover. He was also, unfortunately, one of her company’s best accountants, and Clara Elena, as chief financial officer, had been livid when she learned of the affair. Mia broke it off with Keith out of consideration for the business, and she would be deceiving herself if she pretended she didn’t feel anything for him. But love? It seemed unlikely, but who could be sure of anything these days? Maybe she did love him.

Orlando heard the tremble in her voice and guessed she was lying to him. He cursed briefly and stormed away, vowing to find Kornelius. Even if his thoughts hadn’t jumped to Keith, things would have ended badly, Mia thought. If she was in love with another man, she was in love with another man, nameless or otherwise. There was little that Orlando could have done to change her mind.

What was terrible, of course, was that Keith was about to suffer because of her. She ran to her cell phone and found his number. Dialing, she got nothing but four rings and then voicemail.

“Keith, this is Mia. If Orlando Ciramella shows up at your place, don’t open the door! Call when you get this message, and I’ll explain. Bye.” Mia hung up the phone and fell on to the sofa.

She was suddenly exhausted by the day. She was beginning to doubt the doctor’s diagnosis. How could she have all the symptoms of love if she didn’t know whom she loved? It didn’t make any sense. Orlando was not that person and before that morning she hadn’t particularly cared. But now it was different. There was a lack now, a need to find what was missing. A drop of water had hit her in Falconer’s office, suggesting a whole ocean that could be had, if she would only wise up.

The sound of knocking woke her later that night.

Mia was still on the sofa. “Who is it?” she called.

“Keith Kornelius,” the voice replied. “I’m sorry to come by so late, but I, uh, had an encounter with a certain angry individual. He’s got a mean right hook, I’ll give him that.”

Mia raced to the door and looked through the peephole. Sure enough, the short man stood in front of her, his left eye blackened. His fine red hair was as rumpled as his shirt, and she saw a small trail of blood coming from his lip. “Oh my God, Keith, are you all right?”

“I guess. Now I am.”

“What do you mean ‘now’?”

“Can I come in, Mia? I’ll tell you.”

Mia looked down at the doorknob and then back to the coffee table. “Um, yeah, just a second,” she called back. Mia’s hand reached toward the knob. We really had something, she told herself. It was broken off because it was inappropriate to have at the office, as Clara Elena had said. But we really did have a great time together. He was sweet. Mia peered through the hole again. And handsome, too, she thought. Well, cute. A cute, boyish face. Nothing like the hardness of Orlando. Her finger slipped closer to the doorknob. Just a light shock and we’d be together. That’s all it would take.

But it would take too much.

“Why don’t you just tell me through the door what you meant?”

“I meant Orlando told me what you said. He told me you broke up with him because you were in love with someone else. And I figured that since it was me he was beating up … that you were in love with me.”

“Keith … ”

“I know! Work gets in the way. But I’m willing to step aside. I’ll find another job, it won’t be hard, I’ve had offers.”

“You’d quit so we could be together?” Mia asked, surprised.

“I would.”

Mia smiled. He really was very kind. “I believe you, Keith, but I’m sorry. I want to explain it all to you, but I can’t right now. There’s … there’s a problem with my door.”

“What, is it stuck?” Keith asked, and reached for the knob before Mia could stop him. Keith’s hand snapped back and he released a short, very surprised, yelp. He clutched his fingers, shaking his arm as if he had just hit his funny bone. After turning away from the door, Keith turned back, still clutching his arm. Even through the bubble of the peephole, Mia could see his eyes were watery with pain. “I think I’m going to go, Mia,” he mumbled. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“No, Keith! You don’t understand! Don’t go!” Mia shouted. He didn’t stop. Mia backed away from the door and stared at the burning knob. She would have to smooth things over at work the next day.

That thought was immediately followed by the fear that she would not be able to go to work the next day. Suddenly Mia wasn’t entirely sure whether she would allow herself to leave. Could she open that door if her lover wasn’t standing on the other side? What reason was there to open it, if not to reveal the man she was looking for?

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. She should have turned off the switch and let in Keith; after all, he had gotten punched in the face because of her. She could have tended to his wounds and let him down gently and explained the misunderstanding to him. But she couldn’t. Why?

The next day, would she be able to turn off the voltage for something as simple as going to work, or would she rot in here until her white knight approached? I’ve turned myself into Rapunzel, trapped in a steel and glass tower, waiting. Mia laughed at the idea, but also felt like it was true.

Mia did not go to work the next day. She made bread, something she hadn’t done since she was a girl. She read a book. She left her cell phone off. And she didn’t open the door.

The next morning, while Mia was making an omelet, a knock finally came at the door.

“Who is it?” Mia called, moving the pan off the gas burner.

“What the hell is going on, Mia!” A feminine voice called. Mia stopped short. It was Clara Elena. Mia crossed to the door and looked through the peephole. “Mia, what happened to Keith? He had a black eye and he could hardly use a keyboard yesterday, his hand was twitching so badly.”

“Clara, please go away. This doesn’t concern you.”

“I think it does, Mia. You’re endangering our company.”

“It’s bigger than that. Please, I’ll explain later.”

“What’s going on in there?”

“Nothing, really. Please, I need you to go.”

“What am I supposed to think? You skip work, you do whatever you do to Keith, you’ve got the Sun-Times piled outside your door … have you even been out of your apartment?”

“It’s nothing, Clara. Please,” Mia sighed, leaning her head against the door. “I need some time alone.”

“I don’t think so, Mia. I’m coming in.”

“No, you can’t!”

“I’m worried about you!”

Panic struck Mia as she opened her eye to look through the peephole again. Through that warped bubble she saw Clara Elena reaching for the doorknob. At that moment, Mia’s mind ceased to make decisions for her. Every rational, common-sense argument that would prevent a momentary jolt of pain was overruled. Her hand rushed toward the doorknob. Before Clara Elena could get her fingers near enough to feel the current, the door opened in front of her.

Clara Elena was greeted with the sight of her friend and boss collapsing to the ground, a scream of pain on her lips. What Clara Elena could not see was that as Mia fell to the floor, her body seized and locked in pain, one thought coursed through her veins with that electric pulse: I’m in love.

Doctor Falconer inspected Mia’s hand and wrist while she bemoaned her new situation. Of course she hadn’t realized she was in love! She had never considered that she could be in love with a woman. Of course medical ailments were the only way her heart had left to try to let her brain know what it was feeling! And furthermore, of course, she was in love with Clara Elena Chayes. Her dark eyes and beautiful—

“Mia,” the Doctor said, “how many volts did you wire to the knob?”

“I don’t know, that’s not the point! The point is, what do I do now? Don’t you see, the symptoms have only gotten worse.”

“That’s to be expected, especially in cases like this of unrequited love.”

Mia stared at her doctor as if she had just been slapped. “Unrequited?”

“Now, Mia, wait—”

“You don’t think she loves me back?”

“How would I know, Mia? You’re acting silly. The electricity must have—”

“It’s not the volts, it’s the heart! Aren’t you supposed to be the expert in this field?”

The doctor watched Mia. “What is it that you want, Mia? Do you want to tell her?”

Mia nodded solemnly. “But only if she loves me back.”

“Usually you don’t get to find that part out until afterward.”

“Maybe you could examine her, and tell me if she’s in love, too.”

“That would be unlikely.”

“Isn’t there some sort of test I could do?”

“No more tests, please, you’ll wind up dead.”

“I can’t tell her, she’s another woman! What will she think if she’s straight?”

“Either way, I imagine she’d be flattered.”

“What if she doesn’t love me, though? I don’t know what I’d do.”

The doctor paused once more. “Suicide, Mia?”

She shook her head. “No. I was just … venting.”

“Good.” As if that were the impetus he was waiting for, the doctor moved across the small room and opened a sterile white cabinet. As he searched through the bottles and vials, he spoke to Mia over his shoulder, “Do you believe in aphrodisiacs, Mia?”

“Not especially, no.”

“Isn’t wine an aphrodisiac, though?”

“Possibly.”

“Chocolate, too?”

“I could see that.”

“Laughter?”

“Now you’re speaking metaphorically.”

“Not entirely,” he said. “There are chemical reactions throughout your body, Mia, that occur when you drink wine, or eat chocolate, or laugh. Human beings like to laugh for a reason. Chemically speaking, it makes us feel good. So why can’t that physical and chemical reaction be stimulated by something other than wine or chocolate?”

“Am I supposed to slip an aphrodisiac to Clara Elena in her morning coffee, then?”

He didn’t answer her, but closed the cabinet, two small plastic bottles in his hand. They looked to Mia like normal orange prescription containers for normal kinds of drugs. But something told her the pills within the vials were far from normal. The doctor pocketed one of the bottles before opening the other one, pushing down and twisting at the same time to beat the childproof cap. He dumped a large clear red pill into his palm and closed the bottle again. He held it up for her between his thumb and forefinger, putting the pill between their faces.

Mia stared at the pill and asked, “Are you telling me you have aphrodisiacs in your medical supplies cupboard.”

“I am, yes. But this pill is no aphrodisiac.”

“What is it then?”

“An anti-aphrodisiac.” He waited for Mia’s response, but there was none so he continued. “I ask you, Mia, if we can help love along with chemical responses, whether wine, laughter, or pill, then doesn’t it follow that there are chemicals that can trigger anti-love as well? That is what is in this pill. It is the absolute antithesis of love.”

The doctor slowly lowered it into Mia’s cupped hands. Mia stared at the pill, both revolted and awed by what she held. She was in love, so what was she doing with this horrific object in her hand? It was anathema to everything she now believed in and every emotion she felt coursing through her body. Could this one tiny pill truly eradicate love? Mia’s eyes darted up to the doctor. Why did it suddenly feel like she was bartering with the Devil?

“Why would I want to give this pill to Clara Elena? Why rob her of everything I’m feeling, especially when I don’t know if she’s feeling it?”

“This isn’t a tool of vengeance, Mia. I offer it so that you yourself may take it. Consider it … an alternative to suicide.”

Mia could not help flinching at his words. “This is for me?”

“It’s the ultimate electric shock. This pill will shock your system so much that you will no longer love. I promise you that it will be as horrible an experience as you can imagine; especially in your current state.”

“Then why?” Mia shouted, her throat suddenly parched. The more she thought about this idea, the more she loathed it. Her stomach was beginning to violently react and nausea was sweeping through her. Her cry forced her to double over as the unmistakable taste of bile caught in her mouth. The doctor quickly brought up a small plastic garbage can, and Mia spat into it, cleansing her mouth as best she could. Finally she got control of her breathing and she sat up again. “Why would I take such a horrible thing?” Mia repeated quietly.

The doctor answered her, just as quietly, “If Clara Elena truly loves you, she understands at some subconscious level that you love her, too. Imagine then, how she will react when she sees that your love has gone. Not only that it has gone, but that it has been replaced by nothing less than anti-love.”

“How will she know what anti-love is? I don’t even know.”

“You do. And so does she. I promise you, if she loves you, it will become violently clear very quickly.”

“And then what? It won’t matter because I’ve taken the pill.”

In answer, the doctor pulled the other plastic bottle from his oversized pocket. He opened it and revealed a translucent blue pill, which he handed to Mia. “Then you take this.”

“An aphrodisiac?”

The doctor nodded. “You fall back in love, and the two of you will live happily ever after.”

“What if she doesn’t love me? Then what?”

“I told you that this was a test for true love, Mia. Not every outcome will be a happy one. Think hard before you take the pill, because you are putting everything on the line. It is a risk that should never be taken lightly.” Doctor Falconer smiled tenderly and ushered his patient to the door.

Mia, he thought, as he watched the confused woman go, you have no idea what dangers you are courting with those tools in your pocket. He knew that if she took that red pill, Mia would receive the biggest surprise of her life. Ironic—by the time she’d taken it, the surprise that was in store for her wouldn’t even faze her. What happened after that was—without hyperbole, he felt—up to Divine Intervention. After taking anti-love pill it would take nothing less than a miracle to save her. Was Clara Elena up to it?

That night, Mia placed the pills on her bureau and studied them closely. The two pills were of identical size and texture. In fact there was no difference between them, except that the one was red and the other was blue. How could such a small object, she marveled, contain so much? So much hope in the one, and so much despair in the other. Anti-love. “What a horrendous concept,” she murmured. And yet there was the possibility that it might do so much good. Mia turned out the light next to her bed, and rolled on to her back, consciously aware of the two pills as if they were alive, like pets sleeping at her feet. She almost believed that if she were to open her eyes and look at them in the darkness, she would find them glowing incandescently like lights on a Christmas tree. But she was too afraid to find out for sure.

“Goddammit, Mia,” Clara Elena told her early the next morning. “You cost us one of the best CPAs in the city.”

Mia took her place behind her desk and set the briefcase next to her chair. She tried to maintain a degree of professionalism, but her pounding heart wouldn’t let her. That, and the weight of the pills was affecting her, too. She had wrapped them in a small plastic bag, which seemed somehow disrespectful but she didn’t have anything else to carry them in. On the other side of the desk, Clara Elena perched herself on the edge of the facing chair and waited for Mia’s response.

“Can we get Keith back, do you think?”

“Christ, Mia, that’s not the problem here. You nearly electrocuted an employee! Not only that, but an employee you’d had an affair with less than a year ago! It’s my duty to protect the financial integrity of your company, even from yourself. You have just opened us up to potentially grave litigation that could cost us everything.”

Mia eyed Clara Elena sullenly. Was there any way that this angry woman could be in love with her? Mia sighed and stretched her neck out, staring at the acoustic ceiling tiles as she thought.

 “How’s your hand, Mia?” Clara Elena asked, changing the subject. She smiled softly, and Mia heard the voice of her friend, not her employee.

Mia met her gaze and grinned softly. “Better, thank you.”

“I’ve worried about you. Two days you were gone from work and when I go looking for you I find you’ve electrified the doorknob to your apartment. Not to mention Keith’s run-in with your boyfriend—”

“Ex-boyfriend,” Mia corrected quickly. “I’m through with men for awhile.”

“Whatever,” Clara Elena waved away the clarification as Mia slumped back in her chair. “Ex-boyfriend. These are not things normal people do.”

Mia’s heart began to feel a glimmer of hope. Clara Elena wasn’t totally upset! She was worried and concerned, and she didn’t know how to react to everything, so she just got angry. Mia sat forward in her chair, and wondered if she could do this without the pills. “I appreciate your concern, Clara Elena. It’s been a very rough start to the week for me; these past three days I came to term with a lot of new things. But I think things are looking up,” she finished, a warm smile on her face.

“I’m glad to hear it. Our stockholders might have gotten antsy if they heard our CEO was carted off in a straightjacket,” Clara Elena said, laughing.

Mia wasn’t laughing. “Stockholders?” She choked out.

Clara Elena looked surprised by the serious face. “Well, yeah. With everything else going on in the market, that is the last thing they would have wanted to hear.”

Mia nodded slowly and looked down at her desk. “Listen, Clara Elena, I need to get some work done to catch up. Do you mind? We’ll talk about Keith later.”

“Are you sure? Is anything—”

“No, really. It’s nothing. I’d just like to catch up.” Mia turned away and covered her eyes, already wet, as Clara Elena let herself out of the office.

Was the security of the company all Clara Elena was worried about? How had it happened? Could business really hurt the bonds of friendship and love so much that Clara Elena was actually more concerned about the stockholders than herself? Mia wasn’t ignorant, she knew it was a joke, but what did that change? Clara Elena didn’t alter the statement; she didn’t try to backtrack. Was it possible that everything that had been between the two, every laugh together or every sympathetic tear, could just be wiped away by business?

Anti-love, Mia thought harshly. That’s what this place was. She looked around the office and began to feel suffocated by the barbaric white walls and tiled ceiling. The fluorescent bulbs were burning into Mia as strongly as if she had stuck her finger in the socket. She couldn’t take any more if it. She fled.

Rushing out of the office and past a visibly surprised and concerned Clara Elena, Mia raced for her home. Let her come, Mia laughed mirthlessly. Let Clara Elena come find me. For when she does, I will answer her contempt with my own. She will find nothing but anti-love, and then we will see if it is the numbers of the business she loves or if it is me.

When she reached her apartment, Mia split open the plastic baggy, her mind made up. She poured a glass of water out of the filter in her refrigerator, and carried it into the living room. Mia sat on the leather sofa and closed her eyes with a deep breath. She put the red pill on her tongue, sipped at the water, set the glass back on the table, and then swallowed. Right before passing out and falling backward on the sofa, one thought echoed through her mind. It was the last idea that was to survive the powerful and unstoppable surge of anti-love that coursed through her body.

My God, Mia thought at that last moment, what have I done?

She slept. Eventually, her eyes opened. It was still daylight. The same afternoon? It seemed likely. She sat. She stared.

The effects of the pill were complete. She was totally and unconditionally indifferent. She had become anti-love. If she could have been surprised, she would have marveled that she did not hate.

Mia knew intellectually that she had been in love with Clara Elena Chayes. She knew the words “in love” because that was how she had described her feelings to Doctor Falconer. She could remember saying the words. She could remember listening to others say them, and knew what was supposed to go along with words like that. But she could no more understand what it was like to be in love at that point than she could understand what a dog was thinking. Or a lichen. Or a rock.

The very idea of love seemed inconceivable. It was as foreign to her mind as true anti-love would have been before she had taken the pill.

And it wasn’t just love for Clara Elena that she couldn’t understand, Mia realized. She didn’t know what the word meant in any context. Love was supposed to be something wonderful, she recalled. Which would make this experience terrible, she reasoned. Was it? Her mind did a self-check on her body and reported back. Was this terrible?

Yes, the answer came. Absolutely revolting.

Mia remembered what the doctor had told her. The test for true love would be horrific. He had proposed a solution, too, though, she remembered. The blue pill. Mia’s hand numbly searched for it on the side table, and eventually her groping fingers found the small pill. She clasped it tightly and held it in front of her face. It was the aphrodisiac pill, the love pill. It would restore everything.

Mia stared at the pill for a long time, rolling it between her thumb and forefinger. The anti-love pill had not taken away Mia’s capacity to reason and think. Rather, it divested her of the care, hope, and interest that would have given value to her reason. Her thoughts could take her so far, but she couldn’t follow through on them.

Holding salvation in her hand, Mia knew then that she’d been tricked. The pill was right in front of her and yet she wouldn’t take it. She simply didn’t want to. Why bother? Why change anything? Why do anything? Why love?

Mia moved the pill back toward the table and dropped it with a small splash into the glass of water at her side. She watched the blue pill sink to the bottom of the glass and rapidly dissolve. In any other state Mia might have been surprised at how fast the pill disappeared in the water. Through the clear glass the liquid looked again like plain filtered tap water. Did that mean the pill was gone? Had the chance of escaping this hell vanished?

Mia didn’t know the answer to those questions. Nor did she care.

A day passed.

And then another.

She didn’t move from the sofa. She was thirsty above all. She hadn’t had any liquid in forty-eight hours. She was hungry too, but Mia knew the thirst was the biggest threat to her life. But why live? She didn’t know.

Clara Elena knocked. There knocked again. She gave it the tiniest slap. No shock.

She gripped it firmly and found it unlocked. Clara Elena rushed into the room, shedding her coat and briefcase as she moved.

“Mia, my God! Are you all right?” Clara Elena was at her side in an instant. Mia rolled her head slightly to look at her visitor, and Clara Elena was repulsed. Staring at her were eyes deader than those of any lifeless body. She never believed that any human could have eyes as horrible as those before her. Her friend was blind—no, she should have been blind. It was a tragedy that anyone had to look through such frightening eyes.

But she couldn’t look away, and every second that she stared at the hollow orbs of her friend, Clara Elena realized the truth. She was in love. She was in love with Mia Paris, and her body and soul could only tell her now. Now that this woman was for all intents and purposes lifeless before her, only then could Clara Elena know. It took this horrible moment for her to know, but she knew it then as completely as Mia had known it before, and as unconditionally as Mia now knew anti-love.

“I love you, Mia,” Clara Elena whispered, unable to stop herself. There was no answer. Clara Elena let her hand caress the soft hair of her boss, friend, and true love and began to cry. She had missed her chance. Mia did not love her. But hadn’t she before? What had changed? What had gone wrong? Clara Elena kissed her friend, kissed her with more passion than she had ever put into a kiss, but she only felt parched lips; they didn’t even move. Clara Elena pulled away, suddenly very afraid. She looked around the room through her falling tears. Mia’s clothing was the same that she had worn two days before. Had she really not moved? The thought of Mia’s parched lips suddenly hit home and Clara Elena understood. “Mia, my God, you’re killing yourself.”

What had been single tears turned into sobs and Clara Elena fell forward, crying on to the shoulder of her unresponsive friend.

The plan had worked. The test for true love was positive. But what did it matter now? Mia didn’t love. She didn’t understand the tears coming from this woman’s eyes. She understood nothing, except that this was the road to death. That pill had sealed it for her. The will to live, the will to even simply take the blue pill had departed her.

Gradually, the woman on top of her gained control of her tears. Clara Elena sat up and stared defiantly at the limp, lifeless woman in front of her.

She had never seen anything as horrendous as what lay before her. But she still didn’t know how fully horrible it was. Perhaps that was what gave Clara Elena her hope. “Mia, I love you. I know that now. And I will not let you die, do you understand me. I’m not going to give up on you.”

Mia could not understand the will that empowered her friend, but knew it made little difference anyway. What did any of it matter?

“You are going to live, Mia Paris. Whether you love me or not, you are going to live. This does not have to end this way.”

Yes, it does, Clara Elena, Mia thought. There is nothing left but this.

Clara Elena’s eyes moved away from Mia to the side table. “I’m going to nurse you until you’re back to normal, Mia. Do you understand? You are going to live and someday you are going to love once more. I’ll see to it.”

It’s over, Clara Elena. What does it matter?

Mia watched, apathetic, as Clara Elena picked up the glass of water from the side table. She watched as her friend smelled it, and shrugged. “It’s a bit stale,” Clara Elena said, “but we’ll start with this.” The woman straddled Mia on the couch and lifted back her chin. Clara Elena pinched Mia’s cheeks together with her left hand, causing her dry and cracked lips to part.

“Now,” Clara Elena told her, as she tipped the glass of water forward and began to pour it into the small opening. “Drink.”

About the Author

Alison Archer lives in Minnesota. Her first novel, Zebras In London, will be published in 2012.