Free Babylon and Other Stories by Alix Ohlin

away, but this didn't stop him, any more than her laughter had stopped him the first time.
Oh, Izabel.
To him it was ecstasy, it was a frenzy of joining. She didn't need to see his face to know this. He was unstoppable as Zeus, but didn't need any disguise. The pain was the color red, and the sheets were red, and the sounds he was making were also red. The world was a canvas splotched with red, and she was the paint; she thinned and spread.
    When she woke up, Wade was gone. She sat up and then, pain shooting, lay down again.
    Wade came back and lay beside her, stroking her hair. “Are you all right? Do you feel okay?”
    “Oui, ça va.”
    “Do you want any more soup?” The hair on his chin hurt her skin.
    He held her in his arms. He still did not stop talking; he was incapable of silence. She closed her eyes and dreamt of men: young gods who spoke little, yet eloquently, in heavily accented English. A French trapeze artist, wearing tights, beckoned to her.
Come away with me, Isabelle. I beg it of you.
They would join
le cirque
and perform gravity-defying feats together, catching each other without fail midair. Or perhaps she'd had enough of French, and instead would meet a German, a nobleman, and they would leave America together, travel to the Old Country, and live in the Black Forest, eating Black Forest cake. Dreaming again, she was now her own mother, walking through a church that was also a shopping mall but still beautiful, like a shopping mall in France or ancient Greece. In its high, domed ceilings, angels hung from the rafters singing songs of purchase, sweet hymns of sales reductions on ladies' wear and pantyhose, the sun shafting through the skylights down to the foodcourt and the altar. It was so beautiful, so warm and light, that she wanted to get closer, but she couldn't figure out how to. She couldn't move at all. She was in a world so beautiful that it didn't require signs or maps. All she needed was a red dot with an arrow labeled
You are here.
The angels swooped down toward her, singing
You are here,
holding red sheets open between them like a banner.
Where is here?
she asked, but the angels wouldn't stop to answer the question. They flew off, these pale, singing cherubs, toward a shoe store where everything was 40% Off.
    After Thanksgiving, Izabel was sick for a long time. She moved back into her dorm room and stayed in her bed, sickness a haven she didn't want to leave. Shirelle came back to take care of her, clucking in a gratified, motherly way, and making her tea with molasses, which in Shirelle's family counted as a special treat. As Izabel moved in and out of fever, Shirelle sent Wade away everytime he came to the door. Izabel had papers and tests, but did none of them, Shirelle writing notes for her and forging doctors' signatures. The college granted her extensions on everything: everything, they said, could wait. They were so kind that Izabel didn't have the heart to tell them she wouldn't be back. She was going to freeze in her bed and waste away like Echo, disappearing into sound. Shirelle wouldn't hear of this and brought her Rocky Road ice cream to eat in bed. Wade left a twenty-five-page letter in a manila envelope outside her door; it looked like a term paper, double-spaced, in a ten-point font, complete with footnotes and an index of lists. In it various issues of importance to their relationship were exhaustively explained, all the scholarly evidence marshaled in favor of Wade's argument.
Dear Izabel, I have been doing a lot of thinking and have come to certain conclusions
, which are elaborated in the following pages. We can be friends, can't we? We have so much in common. For example … he wrote, and then gave five pages of examples. He reproduced entire conversations.
In conclusion, even if you don't love me anymore, we can be friends. Please be my friend. Be my best friend.
    “No,” said Iz out loud, sitting in bed. “No.”
    Shirelle said, “You should call the