AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is a story I wrote around February 2006, which should explain the embarrassingly under-par quality of writing, and it has the distinction of being the first, and so far only, "animal story" I've written. I'm posting it because not only do I feel that it's one of the few (maybe only one) stories I've writing that I can still feel proud of after all these years, but also as "supplemental material" for an essay I've been planning to write for the last several week on Intellectual Property. So I present to you, unchanged, "This Cat's Life".
He comes home late and leaves early. I don’t know what he does in all the time that I don’t see him. Just that, coming and going, he always wears the same expression: worn, tired, cold. Unhappy. If I knew how to make him stay forever I’d never be lonely again.
With him gone all there is to do is watch birds out the window. Winter, there’s never any birds around and the ground’s hard and dead with unrelenting layers of frost biting at the soil but come the summer months I can get five winged things in the front yard if I’m lucky. And if there’s no one around to scare them off.
The birds are gutless, pathetic things and most of them are mangy-grey and ugly but every once in awhile I’ll get a bright red cardinal or a beautiful blue jay and I savor the urge to pluck their feathers from every inch of their body with my teeth.
But window-watching loses its appeal quickly when you don’t have a companion to stare with you and reach out a paw to reaffirm the glass’s existence.
When I’m not sitting up at the window I like to stretch out in the sun and bathe myself in its rays. Even on the coldest winter day the sun still shines through and warms a small patch of the living room carpet. Sometimes I lay for hours and hours with my eyes squeezed tight and leaking juice as my belly fills up with a humid warmth. One of my ears always remains cocked to the floor and I can hear every little tick and clank of the pipes as something somewhere turns on and off again.
I often fall asleep while listening to the pipes. Seconds stretch out and drift away as reality and my dreams overlap. It is during these times that I think he’s here when he’s not. I can feel his hand on my fur, even warmer than the sun, and I can feel my heart beat right into the palm.
Even lying in the sun grows old after so long.
He has a kind face. Even though world-worn and heavy he still maintains a gentleness and reserve characteristic of the greatest of kings. His touch is so soft and so light I can’t help but feel myself being drawn into it. The way he moves is like an immense planet and the gravitational pull keeps me weaving in and out between his legs.
Even before he opens the door I’m there to greet him because I could never stay away from his vast presence.
What few toys I have are old and dull. I’ve always found it more than a little demeaning being expected to roll around on the floor with a cheap plastic tinkling ball like it was some demented mouse. Or a battery-powered rolling raccoon ball. Or his shoestrings trailing across the floor like snakes.
I do like catnip, though. Just the smell of it makes my mouth water and the muscles in my paws flex with exhilaration. I always keep my stash of ‘nip close by and where I can find it in case I need my fix at some point throughout the day.
I’m not allowed to go outside so the only world I’ve known are these walls and that carpet and those stairs. Sometimes at night when he forgets to draw the shades I can catch my reflection in the windowpane and it is by that that I can recognize others like me wandering about outside on the street, in the yard, and sometimes even in the bushes. I call out to them but they never hear me. Their eyes are fixed on what is in front of them and their minds are preoccupied with days breathing in the fresh air, feeling the warm grass beneath their feet, and lying out in the real sun, the sun that doesn’t come filtering through two layers of glass.
I’ve seen the way they take down my birds, their ease and grace as they bound through the air and pull the frightened creature back toward the ground. How swift they are to sever the bird’s spine. The way they strut off triumphant and proud with their catch in their mouth, grinning at those in awe and growling at those who wish to take what is theirs. I don’t even know the taste of a bird but my entire body yearns for it like some long forgotten need. In one bird’s eyes is the look of a million other birds and it’s a look I’ve known for a million years before my birth.
I tap the glass and know I can never make it out.
He sleeps a lot. I could say like a cat but that would just be an insult. His slumber is shallow and he spends most of the night turning on his bed. Sometimes he makes noises, too, ranging from mewling to outright yowling. I always curl up at the foot of the bed and listen to him in the darkness of the night. I don’t know what his dreams are filled with but I imagine it can’t be anything good. Like dogs and vacuum cleaners and the sound of running water when you’ve gotten your coat exactly how you want it.
I try to comfort him. I go up and bathe his face with my warm tongue but he always pushes me away. I try to curl up close to his body but he moves so much that I’m afraid I might be crushed. In the end, I’ve learned to just lie at the foot of the bed and ride it out. Always, sometime in the early hours of the morning, he settles down and gets some rest.
Then the alarm goes off and he’s gone again.
I guess my favorite thing to do is sleep, but that sounds so clichéd and makes me feel like I’m lazy. I work hard to keep this little tummy of mine. Even though I find toys demeaning I still chase the tinkling ball around in a more or less dignified manner. I always schedule an hour or two of exercise time each day right before my third bath and right after second breakfast. I’ve also tried to eat less at every meal and to get him to switch over to a low-fat cat food. No luck though, I’m not much for deprivation and he’s never around long enough for me to discuss in detail my decision.
I almost feel stupid for asking anyway. Like I’m not good enough.
I always clam up whenever he’s around. When I’m alone I have no trouble making a ruckus and I even have fun most of the time I’m doing it, but as soon as he comes through the door I just shut up and follow quietly as he goes from room to room. He mumbles to himself sometimes as I follow behind and I prick my ears up to catch each word but I can never understand him. He speaks in the disjointed manner of a personal debate and he always settles it before I can string a coherent sentence together. I could ask him what he’s talking to himself about but I’m afraid he’d look at me funny.
I like to sing in my spare time. Not even he knows how much I like to sing. It helps to pass the time when there are no birds outside and the sun has gone behind a cloud. Most of what I sing are original compositions focusing on the inherent troubles in a feline’s life while a few of them are songs I learned while I was a kitten still living with my mother. Cats don’t like to sing in the presence of other cats but a mother will always sing to her kittens. Mom had the sweetest voice and her words were always so tender. I always find myself humming one of her melodies whenever I’m not paying attention.
I never really knew my father and I never bothered asking Mom about him while I was still living with her. He was gone before I was even born, but I don’t hold anything against him for that. I imagine he was strong and proud and could take on a dog twice his size. Like so many other cats, I imagine he met his end under the wheel of a car or over a piece of poisoned beef or at the bottom of a nasty fall. Cats don’t fall often but when they do it’s a sad sight to see.
I think my father loved to climb trees and catch the birds right where they roost. It’s just that he ran into a sparrow who was too smart for him and knocked him from the branch he crouched on. I imagine him spinning and wheeling through the air, his eyes wild with fear, just before his back snapped on the hard ground. His death was probably bloodless and instantaneous, so he maintained his pride to the very end, even if the bird sat there and laughed at him.
That sparrow may have laughed as my father died but a bird’s life is only so long and the maggot was probably dead within a week.
Days go by when I don’t see him at all, when my food dish remains empty while my stomach growls. I’ve learned to fend for myself. There’s usually a few pieces of a leftover meal on the kitchen table and I can pick off the tastier scraps while leaving the rest untouched. I’m fine without him for short periods of time but I worry that this time he’s gone for good. I couldn’t live without him. I’d go crazy and break free. I’d smash a window. I would search and search until I found him and then I would never leave his side. Sometimes I think about the pain if I threw myself through the window.
I think I could take it.
Today I heard the tinkling of broken glass and caught the reflection of green, slit eyes falling to the floor. He stood over the pieces of the shattered mirror, the frame hanging crooked and twisted on the wall. His hand bled drops of dark red blood and the blood dripped onto the floor, staining pieces of the mirror. I licked at the drops of blood but it tasted bitter and cold. I looked at him and asked him what was wrong but he wouldn’t even return my gaze.
I wanted nothing more to clean his hand of all that red and to dress his wounds with my tongue but I never got the chance. He cleaned away the blood himself and bandaged his own hand in a crude architecture of gauze and tape, leaving his fingers slightly swollen and stiff. Even after he fixed himself up I tried to offer my own little bit comfort but he wouldn’t let me anywhere near the hand. I gave up when he pushed me from the couch where he sat as I tried to cuddle up to him.
I want to try and fix everything. I want to make it better. But I can’t.
The nights are always cold, even when he’s here. He walks around in the dark a lot lately, with only a flashlight sometimes. My eyes adjust easily so it really doesn’t bother me but it hurts to watch him feel around blind against the walls. His feet are always running into corners and I don’t know how to tell him to watch out. Anymore, he goes to bed fully dressed and sleeps under three layers of blankets. I try to keep him from seeing me shiver but it’s so hard. Sometimes at night I watch for his breath to come fogging out so I know he’s still alive.
My toys are still here, my food bowl is still here. Gone is the kibble that used to fill up my bowl, gone is the batteries that kept the raccoon ball rolling in every which direction. He feeds me what he doesn’t eat and as the days go by I notice it’s becoming less and less. We skip meals sometimes. I’m down to three squares a day, but not by choice. I try not to complain too much but sometimes the hunger pains get so bad it feels like I’m going to die. I know he’s doing his best but there isn’t any fresh water anymore and there’s a paper flapping on door every time he comes and goes.
His face has grown old, a decade in three months. I worry if he dies before I do. Who would take care of me?
I love the sun, but in all the time that it is out it could never warm the house up.
All the food in the refrigerator has spoiled. I can smell it as I pass by and I’m not sure what would be worse, to remain hungry or to make myself sick by eating that food. I beg him not to open the door, that the smell would be too horrible, and most days he doesn’t.
Mom said never to get too dependent on anyone but myself. Who does she think gave her that nice box and blankets to give birth in?
I don’t sleep much anymore, or, it I do, I don’t remember it. My grumbling tummy keeps me awake. I just kind of zone in and out of a daze. Sometimes, I smell old french fries on him when he comes home and even though I haven’t seen him eat in such a long time I can taste cold hamburger and browning lettuce on his skin. I forgive him for hording all to himself. I just wish the pain wasn’t so bad.
He doesn’t clean himself anymore and the smell keeps me from going near him.
I envy those cats outside who get to chase the birds. They don’t know how good they have it.
I love him. There isn’t anyone else I could love but him. I live on his gentle pats in the morning and his sweet kisses at night. When I open my eyes he’s all I want to see. When I close them again he’s all I want to dream. His voice echoes in the recesses of my brain and his eyes burn in my mind. I want to take care of him and always be there for him. I wish I could tell him.
There’s always someone knocking at the door and he won’t answer it. I go and hide under the table until whoever it is leaves.
I like heavy metal music. I like the way it feels as it vibrates the bones in my spine.
I want blood. I want meat. I want splintering bones and burst blood vessels. I want my dinner to scream as I tear it apart. I want to fill my belly with twitching tissue and feel that it’s still alive even inside me.
I wish I could tell him how I feel. I wish he knew.
I forgive him for everything. I know none of it is his fault. He was a victim of circumstance and so was I. We’re together and that’s enough to be happy.
The pipes have all gone silent in the floor. I hate trying to listen for their sounds so I don’t. It was a stupid thing to do anyway.
He always smiled when things got bad, so warm. He would smile and scratch behind my ears in that place I like. His tired eyes would light up and that’s how I knew it would all be okay. Whatever happened, I knew it would all work out in the end. He would fix things. He would make it better. Like all the other hard times, this, too, shall pass. Just wait and see.
I may not be able to understand what he’s saying but I understand that much.
This morning I woke up and he was gone, but I’m not worried. I know he’ll be back eventually. Until then, I still have my window and my sun and all my little songs. I can watch the birds and catnap and sing while he’s gone. It doesn’t matter. Once he gets back I won’t have to be lonely anymore.
THE END
Monday, April 12, 2010
Friday, January 22, 2010
The Girl in the Fake Fur Coat
That year the snow didn’t fall until Christmas vacation was almost done with and by mid-day the ground had always begun to thaw and people avoided the places where the grass had gone brown in the autumn’s decline. I drove the back roads on days when it was too cold or the wind blew too hard, with nothing but a driver’s permit and a ’92 Mazda 626 that was prone to irritable starts and had no less than half a dozen previous owners. I bought it from Jed Gallup—who’d bought it for his then-teenaged daughter form Maxwell Bishop on the advice that it was a very reliable car—for $500, plus enough gasoline for me to get it home and deposit it in the grass beside the garage wall.
I loved that car, and intended to fix it up as soon as I could but I didn’t have the tools or the know-how to do such a thing, so I settled to keep it in the condition I bought it in and only drove it when I absolutely had to and I knew I wouldn’t get caught.
I went into town that day to buy lens cleaner and a new battery for my video camera because the old one didn’t keep a charge so well anymore and would often die with little warning just as I was reaching the climax of my latest masterwork. So I drove over to Ted’s Electronics to see if he had a camera battery that would fit my machine and while he was in back with the old battery in one hand and his other hand rooting around inside boxes I picked up the lens cleaner and laid it on the counter. My camera was old and the model had been discontinued for a number of years by that point so finding a new battery for it wasn’t going to be an easy task and I worried a little that I might have to buy a new one because the cost of a brand-new machine was sure to drain the last of what remained of my summer employment at Gossman’s Groceries.
Then Ted came back with a new battery in a theft-proof plastic casing and set it in front of me.
He said, “Now there’s no guarantee that it still works, but it’s the last of what I got. Take it or leave it.”
I said I would take and dug out the twelve bucks and seventy-two cents he was asking for it (I got a discount because he said he wouldn’t’ve been able to pawn it off on anyone else), plus the six ninety-nine for the lens cleaner, and he put everything, including the old battery, into a plastic bag with the store’s logo printed on the front.
“Now you be careful out there,” he said. “The radio said there’s a storm moving in from the east and we’re supposed to get six inches by this time tomorrow.”
I smiled and said, “Thanks,” as I took the bag from his hand and made my retreat out the door, which gave a slow, electronic ding each time it was opened.
I wasn’t until I had gotten outside and started walking the distance to my car that I noticed the first flakes appear in front of my eyes, and I looked down and saw tiny, white crystals beginning to build up the cracks of the sidewalk and in the lower corners of the shop-front windows and on the bumpers of curbside cars. Then, not a second later, I saw her come around the corner in a coat of colors that I thought must’ve come from an exotic animal, arms held aloft, and trailing the tight pack of Old Frank Malloy’s hunting dogs, which, despite many threats from the City Council, he refused to keep tied up.
She held something wrapped in wax paper in both gloved hands and she made low pleading noises to the dogs as one gripped the bottom of her coat with its teeth and tried to get her to stop. She raised her eyes up to mine for only the briefest moment, a cry for help, and before they even fell away. I felt the traitor of a smile begin to appear on my face and stay there long after her attention was back on the dogs. The dogs worked in tandem to get her to stop, one after the other latching onto the idea of gripping the hem of her coat and pulling her to a halt.
I felt bad about smiling like that when the situation was obviously less than amusing for her and I jogged over and used my one free hand to swat at their backs, while yelling, “Scram, Denver! Get lost, Willie! Leave ‘er alone!”
I might’ve actually made all those names up on the spot, I don’t know, but it got the dogs to turn their attention to me for a second and the one I thought of as Denver, a brown and white beagle, gave me a mournful look like he’d known he’d been bad. The rest resumed their terrorization of the girl and I made up names for the rest of them, yelled them out, louder this time, and they turned to me with eyes questioning and a little bemused, and then trotted away down the street.
After they were gone she lowered her arms and let whatever was in the wax paper fall down to the level of her mouth.
“Thanks,” she said.
“Happens all the time.” Though this was a lie because I had only ever seen Malloy’s dogs hunting around in garbage cans for food and never begging for scraps from someone they knew, much less a stranger. “What d’you got there that they wanted so badly?”
She held it out to me so I could see what was inside the wax paper. “Turkey sandwich. Lettuce. Tomato. Mayo. I got it from the deli over there.” She pointed vaguely toward Mr. Greenburg’s butcher shop and I smiled again because I never really thought of the place as a ‘deli’.
She took a bite from the sandwich and began to chew.
“So…” From the look on her face and the way she spoke I knew that she couldn’t’ve been from around there and I wanted to say something that wouldn’t make me sound like a country boy off of the farm and in town to buy feed for the hogs. Which I wasn’t.
“So, I haven’t seen you around here before,” I said.
With her mouth full she shook her head and stared at me with eyes clear and dark and blue, and I saw her brown hair falling to her coat in waves, and I saw the pale oval her face made colored at the cheeks and chin by the cold air, and I saw the pair of oversized waders she had tucked her black khaki pants into. I guessed her to be about the same age as I was, but, at the same time, she seemed like a little kid reluctant to move while held in the gaze of a larger kid.
“I’m visiting my grandparents,” she said, after swallowing. “Was visiting. I’m going home now.”
I tried to affect an attitude of unconcern, like I hadn’t fallen in love with her already and she was breaking my heart by leaving so soon. “And your grandparents are?”
Her expression changed from one of attentive neutrality to that of worried skepticism and I thought that, somehow, I had said the wrong thing and hurried to say, “I’m Conor, by the way. Conor Hawes. My dad owns Hawes Lumber.”
I reached out my hand not sure if she would take it, but she took it, and she said:
“Sarah…Lawley. My grandparents are Joe and Maurine Lawley. They’re retired and I don’t know what they did before.”
“Oh.” I tried to think if the name rang any bells but couldn’t come up with anything. “You’re leaving?”
She nodded. “I was supposed to already be gone but I missed the bus.”
“Oh. Well, do you need me to drive you back to—?”
“The man said there would be another one coming later. Tonight. He said one should be coming.”
I looked upwards toward the sky, which was gray past all the white flakes falling from it.
I said, “There’s a storm coming in, I think. I doubt you want to stay out here waiting for a bus.”
I could see that I was making her really nervous and I tried to give her a harmless smile to calm her but I could still feel her ready to run at any second. “Sorry. I didn’t mean anything by that. I just wondered if you needed a ride.”
“I’m okay waiting for it,” she said.
“I’m sorry that I scared you.”
Her eyebrows came together on her face in a look of beautiful defiance.
I smiled, I couldn’t help it. She looked cute all annoyed and little bit flustered.
She looked back over her shoulder at the corner that she had come around not five minutes before. “You didn’t scare me. Those dogs scared me.” Then she looked back at me. “I don’t think you scare me, though.”
Once she’d turned away I let my eyes wander, down the pale line of her neck mostly concealed by the screen of her hair, down over the material of what could’ve been a t-shirt, though I couldn’t be sure because it was covered up by her coat, to her breasts where they lingered a little too long and when she turned back I could tell she knew where I had been looking.
I tried to think fast and distract myself from what could’ve only been foremost in my mind, so I asked a question. “What’s with the boots?”
“They’re my grandfather’s. He said I could have them. He said that it wasn’t a good idea to walk around in this weather in these.”
By “these” she meant two bulges in her coat’s pockets that I had somehow failed to notice before, out of which peeked rubber and material as well as two separate entwining trails of laces. She handed me her sandwich and pulled them out, showing me a pair of orange low-top sneakers that either hadn’t been worn before and were very well taken care of.
“Yeah,” I said, handing back her sandwich, “your feet would definitely freeze in those.”
She pushed the sandwich back toward me. “You keep it. I’m not that hungry anymore.”
I looked at the sandwich like a prize with its single bite taken out of it but then I reminded myself that it was just a sandwich, so I wrapped it up again in the wax paper and set it on the roof of my car.
By then the snow had begun to fall a little bit faster and the ground around our feet had begun to pale to white and tiny, white flakes of it hung in her hair and in the fur of her coat. I saw for the first time that I could remember that the first snowfall wasn’t going to melt and wash away, but was instead coming to stick and stay on the ground.
I asked, “Do you want me to wait with you? I mean, if the bus isn’t coming until tonight, you’ve still got awhile yet. Yeah?”
She nodded her head and said, “Okay. What did you have in mind?”
I didn’t know what to say. Stunned that she’d said “yes” and stunned that I’d even bothered to ask in the first place, so I didn’t have a pre-planned answer to her follow-up question. Which is why I said, “I think the movie house might be showing something new now, want to check it out?”
“Movie house.” She gave the words, especially the latter, an odd twang, as if she wasn’t used to saying them so close together. Unfortunately, it was all that I had and she had to’ve known that. “Okay. Anything to get out of this weather.”
I wondered if she wasn’t really used to the cold. She certainly wasn’t dressed for it.
“So where are you from, anyway?”
She kept her head ducked down as we began moving so I couldn’t tell if she looked at me. “Here. Me and my parents moved away when I was still a little kid. Kind of been moving ever since. Not really settled on any one place as my home. So.”
“Oh.”
“But right now I’m living in New York.”
“Oh! And how do you like that?”
Now that we were moving I felt more at ease and wanted to learn all I could about her. With each step I tried to position my body a little closer to hers so that my arm would almost be pushing into hers and I felt the hairs of her coat move and brush against the material of the old suede jacket my grandma gave to me. I kept glancing down at the fingers of her hand and thought about moving my own hand over so that it would meet with hers, thinking about our fingers entangling into a multi-knuckled knot.
“I’m studying to be a fashion designer,” she said.
“Fashion designer. That’s like college stuff, isn’t it? How old are you?”
She sniffed, and rubbed her nose, and looked up at me. “I’m seventeen, but I finished school early so now I’m in New York studying fashion. I was home schooled. With all the moving around there really wasn’t much else to do but study.”
She shrugged. “You know?”
“Really? You’re seventeen?” Two years older than I was. It’d be a lie to say that I wasn’t at least a little bit intimidated, but excited as well at the thought of an “older woman”.
She just shrugged again.
“So you live in New York all by yourself?”
“I live on campus, in the dorms. I’ve got a roommate. She’s studying photography, like fashion photography.”
Her eyes were looking into mine like she really wanted me to believe all of this, like she found it pretty unbelievable herself. “That’s very impressive.”
We were coming up on the town’s sole clothing department store, Willard’s Apparel, and a row of plastic mannequins were lined up behind the long window, dressed up in what was supposed to be the latest fashions but were really only an approximation of what could be found in the mail-order catalogues.
I pointed at the mannequins and said, “What do you think about those?”
I slowed my walk, thinking that we would stop as she went over each ensemble with her keen eye and picked out minor but telling details that would make or break the outfit, but instead she blew right on past them with giving a second glance.
She said, “Small town fashion: last year’s belts and mini-skirts thrown together with mountains of junky jewelry. Need I say more?”
I looked at the fake people in the window and thought of at least twenty girls who went to my school that would be pissed to hear her say that.
“So,” I said, about to ask another stupid question, “all the girls in New York dress like you?”
She turned to me, stopping on the sidewalk and positioned herself in about the middle so that she blocked my way, not that it wouldn’t have been easy to slip around either side had I wanted to.
“I have my own style. All the girls in New York dress like sluts and bitches. They all want to pretend like they belong on Laguna Beach.”
I tried to give her a small smile of apology and I said, “Sorry. That came out wrong. I really like your coat is what I meant to say. It’s…cool.”
She looked down at her fur coat as if she just noticed its presence that very second and couldn’t remember when she had put it on. She looked up. “It’s fake. I’m a PETA person. I could never stand to know that any animals were killed just because I needed a coat. It’s only made to look real.”
I took the opportunity to step forward and touch the fake fur along one sleeve, and even in the cold it crackled with static electricity and tingled in my hand. “It does. And it feels real, too.”
She stared at me for a second longer than she meant to, I thought, and then she said, “Thanks.”
Then she turned around again and the imitation hairs were gone from my fingers. She waited in front of me to start walking beside her again, looking back through strands of dark hair with what I could imagine was the most innocent questioning look her face could conjure up.
“So where is this movie house?” she asked.
“It’s just up here and the next street over,” I said.
The snow fell like a shield then and creaked under our feet as we pressed it thin and headlights from the cars moving along the street couldn’t touch us past the thick shower of flakes. We found the movie house where it situated itself in the middle of the block and the ticket guy inside the box wore a heavy winter coat over his uniform. I asked him what was playing and he told me the generic title of a CGI movie whose synopsis was immediately forgettable. I tried paying for both tickets but she took a fold of cash from the mouth of her left boot and peeled off half the price of our admission, so I only paid for my own.
Then she bought her own soda and offered to pay half for a bucket of popcorn, but I told her, “No.”
The theater was mostly empty at that time of the day, except for a scattering of people who must’ve had similar ideas about getting out of the cold and wet. The screen was illuminated by footlights and kept blank in the final minutes before the movie started so there wasn’t much to look at. We found our seats near the back where we would be able to “make our hasty retreat,” I joked.
I set the bucket of popcorn on the armrest between us and balanced it there as it sent up a salty wave of heat and smell that quickly filled the air around us. I kept taking a few kernels at a time and popping them in my mouth, listening to them squeak against my teeth and melt before swallowing. I waited for her to take a few kernels as well but her hand never ventured up to the bucket and I finally gave up, setting the bucket into my lap and taking a sip of soda.
“You seen this movie yet?” I asked.
She held the straw of her soda to her lips but didn’t drink, kept it pressed there like a shushing finger. “I’m not into kids stuff.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Not too long after that, the lights dimmed and screen flashed for a second and the first trailer of half a dozen came on screen. Noise boomed out of the large speakers on the walls and all the voices were amplified to ten times their size. I still felt the brush of her coat against my arm and for the first time I could smell the years of use rising from the fibers and it smelled like the streets after a rainy day and ghosts of restaurant appetizers left half-finished for the birds to eat.
I couldn’t focus throughout the first half-hour of the movie with her sitting so close to me, but after that I began to relax and I felt her relax, too, evidenced by her hand reaching over and lingering toward the rim of the popcorn bucket. Her eyes were transfixed by what was happening up on the screen and her face had lost its seriousness and dissolved into child-like wonder as her brain was dazzled by all the colors thrown out before her. I tried not to move, afraid that I’d disturb her, and inched the bucket slowly back between us so I didn’t feel like such a pervert.
I had slid down so that the back of my head almost came to rest at the top of my seat and gravity, as well as my unusual relation to it, was putting pressure on my lower back and abdomen that seemed to intensify the more I tried to ignore it. I sat up in my seat and stunned her with her mouth half-full and her hand poised at the rim of the popcorn bucket. It took her a few seconds for her eyes to become guarded again and boredom to eke in ever so slightly. She lifted her soda from the cup holder of her seat and put the straw between her lips but it was already empty.
“I need a refill,” she whispered.
Then she moved to slip past me.
“Can I kiss you?” I asked. It was a gutsy move and I might’ve not made it if it wasn’t bolstered by the memory of the look on her face several seconds before.
She turned a little to me, caught yet again in mid-composure, and I didn’t give her any time to think, heading straight in for it. It was brief and wasn’t how I wanted it to be, but her lips were soft and a little bit yielding and I saw her eyes slip close for one beautiful second. Then it was over with like it hadn’t even happened and she looked at me with eyes that could’ve been terrified or thankful and her lips parted just enough that I could see the white crescents of teeth.
She stood in front of me a few seconds more looking like a dark apparition backlit by the theater’s screen, then she broke free of whatever daze I had sunk her in and continued her way to the concession counter.
You she’s going to run, she’s just going to take off. Left there alone with just me and myself, I had plenty of time to second-guess all of my actions leading up to that point. I felt no confirmation that anything I’d done was “okay”. She could’ve been halfway down the street at that point. She could’ve even been in the ladies’ restroom barfing. Every scenario I came up with told me the end result couldn’t’ve been any good.
So I kept my mouth closed, despite my tongue’s pleas to lick and probe for any defining “taste of her”. A guilty curiosity.
I could easily resign myself to the fact that I’d lost her within the scant two-minute interval of her absence. So while I wasn’t awe-struck by her return (I wasn’t breathing either, so maybe I wasn’t getting the correct amount of oxygen to be “awe-struck”) I wasn’t necessarily eager to attempt a repeat of my earlier actions at any point during the rest of the movie or while we were leaving the theater. Better yet, she didn’t even bother to mention it as we made our exit.
Outside, the snow cushioned our walk back to my car and I kept waiting to find our footprints going in the other direction but they were already long buried by then. There wasn’t much talk on the way back but the taste of salt and sugar still hung in my mouth and I’d already begun to associate it as “her taste”, or the taste of “that moment” with her. When we got back to my car I held the door open for her and didn’t think for a second that she wouldn’t climb in.
It had snowed enough by then to turn the turkey sandwich sitting on my roof into and indistinct lump and I reached one ungloved hand in to extract it from its grave. Covered in a layer of tiny crystals it looked mummified and inedible, like a relic I could’ve been discovering for the first time, so I let it drop to the middle of the sidewalk. Maybe Malloy’s dogs would find it and have their supper after all.
I got in and started the car, ran the heater full blast. A bit of snow that had gotten in when I opened the door melted and soaked into my pants leg.
“So,” I asked, “what do you want to do now?” Hoping not to sound too hopeful.
“I’ve got classes that start in two days and if I’m late I might not be able to catch up,” she said.
“Um.”
She turned to me. “Can we just sit here for awhile?”
“Sure.”
I ran the wipers to clear the windshield and only succeeded in slightly improving the view. The first fall of snow had already begun to turn to frost and through the windshield single, intricate flakes clung like starfish to the glass of an aquarium tank. Other than that, it seemed to me were encased in a box of white.
The radio played and the station’s announcer was giving out tickets to a band I’d never heard of, to the fifth caller who could get through. Then they played a song by the band and it was song I had heard plenty of times but never struck me in such a way to be less than anonymous. The tune was catchy in an instant and forgotten in a heartbeat.
I reached into the backseat for my video camera, which I had laid there on the very-off chance that I might come across something to film while in town, and, as if by instinct, my thumb went for the ON/OFF switch. I immediately saw the vacant battery slot and went into a stiff panic as I searched my brain for where I might’ve put the batteries. Looking through the backseat again, I saw something white and crumpled, multi-faceted like a diamond imploding upon itself, and pulled the bag containing the batteries and lens cleaner into my lap.
Since I had no tools with which to open the plastic casing of the new battery, I slipped the old battery into its slot on the back of the camera and fired it up.
With me and her there in the car, I flipped open the screen on the side and aimed the camera at her; framed her face in the screen and hit REC.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Filming you.”
“You’re recording me?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
It took me a second to define the why and put it into words that didn’t sound cheesy or fake.
“Because you’re very interesting to me,” I said.
I didn’t quite expect the reaction I got. A wave of color seemed to start at her neckline and work its way up across her face and she began chewing her lips turning them to a deep red. She tried to hide in the tiny space of the passenger seat but there was nowhere she could go to escape the eye of the camera, so she put her hands up by her face and looked at me past the edge of her palm with eyes that seemed glassy all of a sudden and pupils huge as dimes.
She embarrassed me in her embarrassment.
I lowered the camera and shut the screen and she lowered her hands from her face. The camera would go on to record for another three minutes and twenty-seven seconds before the battery would suddenly give out and in that time most of what would be recorded would be her knees in her black khaki pants and the gray sky out of the passenger side window and a blurry close up of what I always assumed to be a cup holder.
My mind was like a flooding chasm, like my brain was swelling up with blood and my head was about to explode. I couldn’t think, or, if I did think, it was only about one thing.
I wanted more than just the “movie house” taste of her and I’d like to believe my actions were mutual, though logic and rationality became buried under a height of sensory detail. Whatever gravity our situation contained, I bore down on her as much as she bore into me and I came to examine everything as if under a microscope. Goosebumps and tiny hairs that stood on end at the back of her neck became like an endless terrain I could spend a lifetime traversing.
The strap of the camera was tight around my right hand and I couldn’t remove it without employing the effort of my left hand which was busy going inside of her coat and climbing the ladder of her ribs to where the shape of her bra could be felt through the fabric of her t-shirt, and my fingertips inched toward what the bra contained. But she moved her body, and lips, away out of reach and the sound of breathing was so loud that I couldn’t tell if it came from me or her.
“Not here,” she whispered.
“Where then?”
I watched her recede. At that moment everything felt a million miles away and even the line of storefronts that laid just on the other side of the glass could’ve been as remote to me as any other space she might’ve occupied at any other time.
When did she say her bus was coming? She didn’t. I felt the seconds ticking down.
I was difficult to leave the car, to move from that pocket of warmth to sidewalk where, I noticed I think for the first time, the temperature seemed to be swiftly falling. I cleared the windows with the brush end of an ice scraper I kept in my trunk, the frost layer gone to melt. I thought she might’ve been watching me as I went, but she remained a dark blur and every time I looked in I couldn’t find where her eyes lay.
I drove the back roads past Heissman’s farm. There was a tiny shack that technically resided on the farm’s land but which had remained unused for as long as I could remember. It laid just on the periphery of a field almost as if it were about to sneak away into the trees that surrounded everything that hadn’t been given over to cultivation. I watched the approach of that screen at the far end and aimed my wheels for the single-lane dirt road, invisible now, that led to the only destination I could think of on such short notice.
I kept the engine running so the hot air would keep blowing, so I could get her out of her coat.
I found her in the same way I had before but I couldn’t re-obtain the same focus. The world didn’t shrink to her and mine miniscule properties and I found my thoughts dominated by the shack with its one dark window and the field beside it, a white expanse. It set the scene for something different and I’d supposed she felt it too because her own interest in me seemed less than what it’d been before.
I heard a door pop and felt a cold gust of air. I had my eyes closed to shut out what lay around us (my brain might work better if I did), but I opened them then to see flying backwards as if she were being pulled almost but her body shifted and turned as it crossed the door’s threshold so I could see she moved under her own power. I thought, This is it, a delayed result, but a result nonetheless. Odd that she’d pick this moment to run, but then I saw her turn to give a glance back and the clump of her boots slowed as if to beckon.
I found myself shuffling across the island between the seats instead of opening my own door and getting out that way. I gave chase because that seemed what she wanted me to do, but unsure enough not to dig into the snow and bound after her at full speed.
She ran zig-zags, hindered by the over-sized waders and throwing up snow at her heels with each overcompensated step.
I caught up to her easily enough and could’ve tackled her to the ground, but at the last second I threw myself wide so that the tips of my fingers just almost came to touch the tips of her fur right before I found myself half-buried in snow. It was dry snow so the cold stood at a buffer, but, still, every inch of exposed skin was soon inflamed, and it didn’t help when she reversed to push a handful of snow into what was the only part of me that had remained unburied.
“No fair,” I said. I couldn’t brush the snow from my nose and cheeks fast enough to keep it from melting and stinging all the way to the middles of my ears.
I jumped up, a little angry, a little exhilarated because she had just given me permission, I felt, for what I was about to do next. I caught up with her again and caught her at the knees, bringing her down as gently as I could as I preceded her in contact with the ground. Somehow I had driven her out of one of her waders, revealing one pink sock emblazoned with strawberries (no comment), and was merciful enough to allow her to reach for it and begin to pull it back on before continuing my attack.
At first, I was going to shove snow in her face for doing the same to me, but thought that might be too cruel, so instead I used my weight to push her down into the snow since her instinct was the same as mine, to stay as far above as possible. She made a deep indentation and closed her eyes to await further punishment. I hadn’t noticed until that moment how hard I was breathing or how fast my heart was pounding, and I doubted it had much to do with physical exertion.
Her body felt very tense under me.
I needed to know where things were going to go next.
“What time do you leave?” I asked.
She opened her eyes and looked at me as if the question didn’t make any sense.
She said, “The bus’ll probably be late anyway.”
“But what time?”
I had to feel her shrug through my hands pinning her down and take that as my only answer.
Her eyes were green. I’d thought they’d been blue before, but they were green now, maybe some trick of the light, and I thought I could see myself hovering over her reflected in their centers.
“Could you let me up?”
I leant over and kissed her. I felt I had to take something by force, even if it was something she had given me already. She didn’t move against me or struggle and I took everything I could in one long moment: the way her hair smelled of citrus and vanilla, the tiny portholes of her nostrils that somehow channeled enough oxygen in and out of her, the uneven crescents of her fingernails, the heat radiating from her crotch as I kept one leg wedged in the junction of her thighs, and the dry skin of her chapped lips that no amount of spit could disguise.
Then I allowed her up and brushed the snow from her back and hair, and she finally got the dislocated wader the rest of the way on. There was no point in hanging around any longer. We walked back to the car, as if by some unspoken agreement, and got into and interior that had become just as cold as it was outside, the heater not working so well when you leave one door standing open. I piloted the car out to the road and pointed it back toward town.
I had grown dark early and the headlights illuminated specks of white as they swept in to tap at the windshield and fly past the windows. We came into downtown the same way we had left and the tires crunched the snow beneath as they headed toward the bus depot.
Businesses were closing up and I eased the car against a hard ledge of curb just past a bench enclosed in a corrugated-steel roofed structure. We both looked at it through the windows. Snow had drifted up around its base and filtered through the boards leaving behind pillows of white resting on the seat. I told her she could wait for the bus in my car and everything around us became empty and light was cast from the street corners in false halo that pervaded everything.
I had to know.
“Will you come back?” I asked.
She looked at me in a way that could’ve been terror or frustration.
“No,” she said. “I don’t think so.”
We left it at that. The thought of losing her wasn’t so terrible. There were probably girls like her all over the place.
I turned the headlights off and kept the radio low to leave my head swimming through the melodies. The afternoon seemed like forever ago when the only thing on my mind had been a new battery and lens cleaner. I knew I still had that image of her in my camera, knew I had proof that she existed at least at one time. I looked at the camera where it laid face-down into a cup holder.
It was then that headlights appeared at the end of the street and I saw the shape of her bus come rolling toward the stop. Inside the bus the lights were on and I didn’t see anyone else besides the driver. I thought of her riding all the way back to New York on the bus alone and staring out of the window as white landscapes rolled on by and the cold air rushed just inches from her face.
She got out of the car with just a, “Bye,” and shut the door. I noticed for the first time that she didn’t have any bags or luggage, though she had to’ve had at least one change of clothes I figured. Unless she came to visit just for the day, but all the way from New York?
I watched as she went over to the door and climbed on without looking back even once, and I saw her walk the aisle between the seats which I could see now held a few other passengers, and she sat in a seat on the side opposite of me so when the bus rolled away I couldn’t see her at all.
Of course I searched the phonebook for any Lawleys the next day after I woke up but didn’t find anyone with that name or any name that sounded close to it. I even tried entering her name into Google Search but I didn’t know enough about her to pick this one Sarah Lawley from the bunch, even when I added “New York” to the search criteria. It was a fake name anyway, I was sure of it, so I forced myself away from making any further inquiries and focused on starting a new project. Except I was pretty much snowed in and there wasn’t much to do around the house.
I found myself dragging my feet through the snow a lot and throwing myself down into the blanket, only to pick myself up and do it again. It was physical enough to be entertaining in a mindless way.
I’d still had that little piece of her left over on my camera. Her face and the sound of my voice. ‘Because you’re very interesting to me.’ Her face hidden behind her hands.
I deleted that once I came across it again after fooling myself into forgetting about it. “Are you sure you want to erase? Y/N.” As if I could hurt her by eradicating every last trace.
Whatever.
THE END
I loved that car, and intended to fix it up as soon as I could but I didn’t have the tools or the know-how to do such a thing, so I settled to keep it in the condition I bought it in and only drove it when I absolutely had to and I knew I wouldn’t get caught.
I went into town that day to buy lens cleaner and a new battery for my video camera because the old one didn’t keep a charge so well anymore and would often die with little warning just as I was reaching the climax of my latest masterwork. So I drove over to Ted’s Electronics to see if he had a camera battery that would fit my machine and while he was in back with the old battery in one hand and his other hand rooting around inside boxes I picked up the lens cleaner and laid it on the counter. My camera was old and the model had been discontinued for a number of years by that point so finding a new battery for it wasn’t going to be an easy task and I worried a little that I might have to buy a new one because the cost of a brand-new machine was sure to drain the last of what remained of my summer employment at Gossman’s Groceries.
Then Ted came back with a new battery in a theft-proof plastic casing and set it in front of me.
He said, “Now there’s no guarantee that it still works, but it’s the last of what I got. Take it or leave it.”
I said I would take and dug out the twelve bucks and seventy-two cents he was asking for it (I got a discount because he said he wouldn’t’ve been able to pawn it off on anyone else), plus the six ninety-nine for the lens cleaner, and he put everything, including the old battery, into a plastic bag with the store’s logo printed on the front.
“Now you be careful out there,” he said. “The radio said there’s a storm moving in from the east and we’re supposed to get six inches by this time tomorrow.”
I smiled and said, “Thanks,” as I took the bag from his hand and made my retreat out the door, which gave a slow, electronic ding each time it was opened.
I wasn’t until I had gotten outside and started walking the distance to my car that I noticed the first flakes appear in front of my eyes, and I looked down and saw tiny, white crystals beginning to build up the cracks of the sidewalk and in the lower corners of the shop-front windows and on the bumpers of curbside cars. Then, not a second later, I saw her come around the corner in a coat of colors that I thought must’ve come from an exotic animal, arms held aloft, and trailing the tight pack of Old Frank Malloy’s hunting dogs, which, despite many threats from the City Council, he refused to keep tied up.
She held something wrapped in wax paper in both gloved hands and she made low pleading noises to the dogs as one gripped the bottom of her coat with its teeth and tried to get her to stop. She raised her eyes up to mine for only the briefest moment, a cry for help, and before they even fell away. I felt the traitor of a smile begin to appear on my face and stay there long after her attention was back on the dogs. The dogs worked in tandem to get her to stop, one after the other latching onto the idea of gripping the hem of her coat and pulling her to a halt.
I felt bad about smiling like that when the situation was obviously less than amusing for her and I jogged over and used my one free hand to swat at their backs, while yelling, “Scram, Denver! Get lost, Willie! Leave ‘er alone!”
I might’ve actually made all those names up on the spot, I don’t know, but it got the dogs to turn their attention to me for a second and the one I thought of as Denver, a brown and white beagle, gave me a mournful look like he’d known he’d been bad. The rest resumed their terrorization of the girl and I made up names for the rest of them, yelled them out, louder this time, and they turned to me with eyes questioning and a little bemused, and then trotted away down the street.
After they were gone she lowered her arms and let whatever was in the wax paper fall down to the level of her mouth.
“Thanks,” she said.
“Happens all the time.” Though this was a lie because I had only ever seen Malloy’s dogs hunting around in garbage cans for food and never begging for scraps from someone they knew, much less a stranger. “What d’you got there that they wanted so badly?”
She held it out to me so I could see what was inside the wax paper. “Turkey sandwich. Lettuce. Tomato. Mayo. I got it from the deli over there.” She pointed vaguely toward Mr. Greenburg’s butcher shop and I smiled again because I never really thought of the place as a ‘deli’.
She took a bite from the sandwich and began to chew.
“So…” From the look on her face and the way she spoke I knew that she couldn’t’ve been from around there and I wanted to say something that wouldn’t make me sound like a country boy off of the farm and in town to buy feed for the hogs. Which I wasn’t.
“So, I haven’t seen you around here before,” I said.
With her mouth full she shook her head and stared at me with eyes clear and dark and blue, and I saw her brown hair falling to her coat in waves, and I saw the pale oval her face made colored at the cheeks and chin by the cold air, and I saw the pair of oversized waders she had tucked her black khaki pants into. I guessed her to be about the same age as I was, but, at the same time, she seemed like a little kid reluctant to move while held in the gaze of a larger kid.
“I’m visiting my grandparents,” she said, after swallowing. “Was visiting. I’m going home now.”
I tried to affect an attitude of unconcern, like I hadn’t fallen in love with her already and she was breaking my heart by leaving so soon. “And your grandparents are?”
Her expression changed from one of attentive neutrality to that of worried skepticism and I thought that, somehow, I had said the wrong thing and hurried to say, “I’m Conor, by the way. Conor Hawes. My dad owns Hawes Lumber.”
I reached out my hand not sure if she would take it, but she took it, and she said:
“Sarah…Lawley. My grandparents are Joe and Maurine Lawley. They’re retired and I don’t know what they did before.”
“Oh.” I tried to think if the name rang any bells but couldn’t come up with anything. “You’re leaving?”
She nodded. “I was supposed to already be gone but I missed the bus.”
“Oh. Well, do you need me to drive you back to—?”
“The man said there would be another one coming later. Tonight. He said one should be coming.”
I looked upwards toward the sky, which was gray past all the white flakes falling from it.
I said, “There’s a storm coming in, I think. I doubt you want to stay out here waiting for a bus.”
I could see that I was making her really nervous and I tried to give her a harmless smile to calm her but I could still feel her ready to run at any second. “Sorry. I didn’t mean anything by that. I just wondered if you needed a ride.”
“I’m okay waiting for it,” she said.
“I’m sorry that I scared you.”
Her eyebrows came together on her face in a look of beautiful defiance.
I smiled, I couldn’t help it. She looked cute all annoyed and little bit flustered.
She looked back over her shoulder at the corner that she had come around not five minutes before. “You didn’t scare me. Those dogs scared me.” Then she looked back at me. “I don’t think you scare me, though.”
Once she’d turned away I let my eyes wander, down the pale line of her neck mostly concealed by the screen of her hair, down over the material of what could’ve been a t-shirt, though I couldn’t be sure because it was covered up by her coat, to her breasts where they lingered a little too long and when she turned back I could tell she knew where I had been looking.
I tried to think fast and distract myself from what could’ve only been foremost in my mind, so I asked a question. “What’s with the boots?”
“They’re my grandfather’s. He said I could have them. He said that it wasn’t a good idea to walk around in this weather in these.”
By “these” she meant two bulges in her coat’s pockets that I had somehow failed to notice before, out of which peeked rubber and material as well as two separate entwining trails of laces. She handed me her sandwich and pulled them out, showing me a pair of orange low-top sneakers that either hadn’t been worn before and were very well taken care of.
“Yeah,” I said, handing back her sandwich, “your feet would definitely freeze in those.”
She pushed the sandwich back toward me. “You keep it. I’m not that hungry anymore.”
I looked at the sandwich like a prize with its single bite taken out of it but then I reminded myself that it was just a sandwich, so I wrapped it up again in the wax paper and set it on the roof of my car.
By then the snow had begun to fall a little bit faster and the ground around our feet had begun to pale to white and tiny, white flakes of it hung in her hair and in the fur of her coat. I saw for the first time that I could remember that the first snowfall wasn’t going to melt and wash away, but was instead coming to stick and stay on the ground.
I asked, “Do you want me to wait with you? I mean, if the bus isn’t coming until tonight, you’ve still got awhile yet. Yeah?”
She nodded her head and said, “Okay. What did you have in mind?”
I didn’t know what to say. Stunned that she’d said “yes” and stunned that I’d even bothered to ask in the first place, so I didn’t have a pre-planned answer to her follow-up question. Which is why I said, “I think the movie house might be showing something new now, want to check it out?”
“Movie house.” She gave the words, especially the latter, an odd twang, as if she wasn’t used to saying them so close together. Unfortunately, it was all that I had and she had to’ve known that. “Okay. Anything to get out of this weather.”
I wondered if she wasn’t really used to the cold. She certainly wasn’t dressed for it.
“So where are you from, anyway?”
She kept her head ducked down as we began moving so I couldn’t tell if she looked at me. “Here. Me and my parents moved away when I was still a little kid. Kind of been moving ever since. Not really settled on any one place as my home. So.”
“Oh.”
“But right now I’m living in New York.”
“Oh! And how do you like that?”
Now that we were moving I felt more at ease and wanted to learn all I could about her. With each step I tried to position my body a little closer to hers so that my arm would almost be pushing into hers and I felt the hairs of her coat move and brush against the material of the old suede jacket my grandma gave to me. I kept glancing down at the fingers of her hand and thought about moving my own hand over so that it would meet with hers, thinking about our fingers entangling into a multi-knuckled knot.
“I’m studying to be a fashion designer,” she said.
“Fashion designer. That’s like college stuff, isn’t it? How old are you?”
She sniffed, and rubbed her nose, and looked up at me. “I’m seventeen, but I finished school early so now I’m in New York studying fashion. I was home schooled. With all the moving around there really wasn’t much else to do but study.”
She shrugged. “You know?”
“Really? You’re seventeen?” Two years older than I was. It’d be a lie to say that I wasn’t at least a little bit intimidated, but excited as well at the thought of an “older woman”.
She just shrugged again.
“So you live in New York all by yourself?”
“I live on campus, in the dorms. I’ve got a roommate. She’s studying photography, like fashion photography.”
Her eyes were looking into mine like she really wanted me to believe all of this, like she found it pretty unbelievable herself. “That’s very impressive.”
We were coming up on the town’s sole clothing department store, Willard’s Apparel, and a row of plastic mannequins were lined up behind the long window, dressed up in what was supposed to be the latest fashions but were really only an approximation of what could be found in the mail-order catalogues.
I pointed at the mannequins and said, “What do you think about those?”
I slowed my walk, thinking that we would stop as she went over each ensemble with her keen eye and picked out minor but telling details that would make or break the outfit, but instead she blew right on past them with giving a second glance.
She said, “Small town fashion: last year’s belts and mini-skirts thrown together with mountains of junky jewelry. Need I say more?”
I looked at the fake people in the window and thought of at least twenty girls who went to my school that would be pissed to hear her say that.
“So,” I said, about to ask another stupid question, “all the girls in New York dress like you?”
She turned to me, stopping on the sidewalk and positioned herself in about the middle so that she blocked my way, not that it wouldn’t have been easy to slip around either side had I wanted to.
“I have my own style. All the girls in New York dress like sluts and bitches. They all want to pretend like they belong on Laguna Beach.”
I tried to give her a small smile of apology and I said, “Sorry. That came out wrong. I really like your coat is what I meant to say. It’s…cool.”
She looked down at her fur coat as if she just noticed its presence that very second and couldn’t remember when she had put it on. She looked up. “It’s fake. I’m a PETA person. I could never stand to know that any animals were killed just because I needed a coat. It’s only made to look real.”
I took the opportunity to step forward and touch the fake fur along one sleeve, and even in the cold it crackled with static electricity and tingled in my hand. “It does. And it feels real, too.”
She stared at me for a second longer than she meant to, I thought, and then she said, “Thanks.”
Then she turned around again and the imitation hairs were gone from my fingers. She waited in front of me to start walking beside her again, looking back through strands of dark hair with what I could imagine was the most innocent questioning look her face could conjure up.
“So where is this movie house?” she asked.
“It’s just up here and the next street over,” I said.
The snow fell like a shield then and creaked under our feet as we pressed it thin and headlights from the cars moving along the street couldn’t touch us past the thick shower of flakes. We found the movie house where it situated itself in the middle of the block and the ticket guy inside the box wore a heavy winter coat over his uniform. I asked him what was playing and he told me the generic title of a CGI movie whose synopsis was immediately forgettable. I tried paying for both tickets but she took a fold of cash from the mouth of her left boot and peeled off half the price of our admission, so I only paid for my own.
Then she bought her own soda and offered to pay half for a bucket of popcorn, but I told her, “No.”
The theater was mostly empty at that time of the day, except for a scattering of people who must’ve had similar ideas about getting out of the cold and wet. The screen was illuminated by footlights and kept blank in the final minutes before the movie started so there wasn’t much to look at. We found our seats near the back where we would be able to “make our hasty retreat,” I joked.
I set the bucket of popcorn on the armrest between us and balanced it there as it sent up a salty wave of heat and smell that quickly filled the air around us. I kept taking a few kernels at a time and popping them in my mouth, listening to them squeak against my teeth and melt before swallowing. I waited for her to take a few kernels as well but her hand never ventured up to the bucket and I finally gave up, setting the bucket into my lap and taking a sip of soda.
“You seen this movie yet?” I asked.
She held the straw of her soda to her lips but didn’t drink, kept it pressed there like a shushing finger. “I’m not into kids stuff.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Not too long after that, the lights dimmed and screen flashed for a second and the first trailer of half a dozen came on screen. Noise boomed out of the large speakers on the walls and all the voices were amplified to ten times their size. I still felt the brush of her coat against my arm and for the first time I could smell the years of use rising from the fibers and it smelled like the streets after a rainy day and ghosts of restaurant appetizers left half-finished for the birds to eat.
I couldn’t focus throughout the first half-hour of the movie with her sitting so close to me, but after that I began to relax and I felt her relax, too, evidenced by her hand reaching over and lingering toward the rim of the popcorn bucket. Her eyes were transfixed by what was happening up on the screen and her face had lost its seriousness and dissolved into child-like wonder as her brain was dazzled by all the colors thrown out before her. I tried not to move, afraid that I’d disturb her, and inched the bucket slowly back between us so I didn’t feel like such a pervert.
I had slid down so that the back of my head almost came to rest at the top of my seat and gravity, as well as my unusual relation to it, was putting pressure on my lower back and abdomen that seemed to intensify the more I tried to ignore it. I sat up in my seat and stunned her with her mouth half-full and her hand poised at the rim of the popcorn bucket. It took her a few seconds for her eyes to become guarded again and boredom to eke in ever so slightly. She lifted her soda from the cup holder of her seat and put the straw between her lips but it was already empty.
“I need a refill,” she whispered.
Then she moved to slip past me.
“Can I kiss you?” I asked. It was a gutsy move and I might’ve not made it if it wasn’t bolstered by the memory of the look on her face several seconds before.
She turned a little to me, caught yet again in mid-composure, and I didn’t give her any time to think, heading straight in for it. It was brief and wasn’t how I wanted it to be, but her lips were soft and a little bit yielding and I saw her eyes slip close for one beautiful second. Then it was over with like it hadn’t even happened and she looked at me with eyes that could’ve been terrified or thankful and her lips parted just enough that I could see the white crescents of teeth.
She stood in front of me a few seconds more looking like a dark apparition backlit by the theater’s screen, then she broke free of whatever daze I had sunk her in and continued her way to the concession counter.
You she’s going to run, she’s just going to take off. Left there alone with just me and myself, I had plenty of time to second-guess all of my actions leading up to that point. I felt no confirmation that anything I’d done was “okay”. She could’ve been halfway down the street at that point. She could’ve even been in the ladies’ restroom barfing. Every scenario I came up with told me the end result couldn’t’ve been any good.
So I kept my mouth closed, despite my tongue’s pleas to lick and probe for any defining “taste of her”. A guilty curiosity.
I could easily resign myself to the fact that I’d lost her within the scant two-minute interval of her absence. So while I wasn’t awe-struck by her return (I wasn’t breathing either, so maybe I wasn’t getting the correct amount of oxygen to be “awe-struck”) I wasn’t necessarily eager to attempt a repeat of my earlier actions at any point during the rest of the movie or while we were leaving the theater. Better yet, she didn’t even bother to mention it as we made our exit.
Outside, the snow cushioned our walk back to my car and I kept waiting to find our footprints going in the other direction but they were already long buried by then. There wasn’t much talk on the way back but the taste of salt and sugar still hung in my mouth and I’d already begun to associate it as “her taste”, or the taste of “that moment” with her. When we got back to my car I held the door open for her and didn’t think for a second that she wouldn’t climb in.
It had snowed enough by then to turn the turkey sandwich sitting on my roof into and indistinct lump and I reached one ungloved hand in to extract it from its grave. Covered in a layer of tiny crystals it looked mummified and inedible, like a relic I could’ve been discovering for the first time, so I let it drop to the middle of the sidewalk. Maybe Malloy’s dogs would find it and have their supper after all.
I got in and started the car, ran the heater full blast. A bit of snow that had gotten in when I opened the door melted and soaked into my pants leg.
“So,” I asked, “what do you want to do now?” Hoping not to sound too hopeful.
“I’ve got classes that start in two days and if I’m late I might not be able to catch up,” she said.
“Um.”
She turned to me. “Can we just sit here for awhile?”
“Sure.”
I ran the wipers to clear the windshield and only succeeded in slightly improving the view. The first fall of snow had already begun to turn to frost and through the windshield single, intricate flakes clung like starfish to the glass of an aquarium tank. Other than that, it seemed to me were encased in a box of white.
The radio played and the station’s announcer was giving out tickets to a band I’d never heard of, to the fifth caller who could get through. Then they played a song by the band and it was song I had heard plenty of times but never struck me in such a way to be less than anonymous. The tune was catchy in an instant and forgotten in a heartbeat.
I reached into the backseat for my video camera, which I had laid there on the very-off chance that I might come across something to film while in town, and, as if by instinct, my thumb went for the ON/OFF switch. I immediately saw the vacant battery slot and went into a stiff panic as I searched my brain for where I might’ve put the batteries. Looking through the backseat again, I saw something white and crumpled, multi-faceted like a diamond imploding upon itself, and pulled the bag containing the batteries and lens cleaner into my lap.
Since I had no tools with which to open the plastic casing of the new battery, I slipped the old battery into its slot on the back of the camera and fired it up.
With me and her there in the car, I flipped open the screen on the side and aimed the camera at her; framed her face in the screen and hit REC.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Filming you.”
“You’re recording me?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
It took me a second to define the why and put it into words that didn’t sound cheesy or fake.
“Because you’re very interesting to me,” I said.
I didn’t quite expect the reaction I got. A wave of color seemed to start at her neckline and work its way up across her face and she began chewing her lips turning them to a deep red. She tried to hide in the tiny space of the passenger seat but there was nowhere she could go to escape the eye of the camera, so she put her hands up by her face and looked at me past the edge of her palm with eyes that seemed glassy all of a sudden and pupils huge as dimes.
She embarrassed me in her embarrassment.
I lowered the camera and shut the screen and she lowered her hands from her face. The camera would go on to record for another three minutes and twenty-seven seconds before the battery would suddenly give out and in that time most of what would be recorded would be her knees in her black khaki pants and the gray sky out of the passenger side window and a blurry close up of what I always assumed to be a cup holder.
My mind was like a flooding chasm, like my brain was swelling up with blood and my head was about to explode. I couldn’t think, or, if I did think, it was only about one thing.
I wanted more than just the “movie house” taste of her and I’d like to believe my actions were mutual, though logic and rationality became buried under a height of sensory detail. Whatever gravity our situation contained, I bore down on her as much as she bore into me and I came to examine everything as if under a microscope. Goosebumps and tiny hairs that stood on end at the back of her neck became like an endless terrain I could spend a lifetime traversing.
The strap of the camera was tight around my right hand and I couldn’t remove it without employing the effort of my left hand which was busy going inside of her coat and climbing the ladder of her ribs to where the shape of her bra could be felt through the fabric of her t-shirt, and my fingertips inched toward what the bra contained. But she moved her body, and lips, away out of reach and the sound of breathing was so loud that I couldn’t tell if it came from me or her.
“Not here,” she whispered.
“Where then?”
I watched her recede. At that moment everything felt a million miles away and even the line of storefronts that laid just on the other side of the glass could’ve been as remote to me as any other space she might’ve occupied at any other time.
When did she say her bus was coming? She didn’t. I felt the seconds ticking down.
I was difficult to leave the car, to move from that pocket of warmth to sidewalk where, I noticed I think for the first time, the temperature seemed to be swiftly falling. I cleared the windows with the brush end of an ice scraper I kept in my trunk, the frost layer gone to melt. I thought she might’ve been watching me as I went, but she remained a dark blur and every time I looked in I couldn’t find where her eyes lay.
I drove the back roads past Heissman’s farm. There was a tiny shack that technically resided on the farm’s land but which had remained unused for as long as I could remember. It laid just on the periphery of a field almost as if it were about to sneak away into the trees that surrounded everything that hadn’t been given over to cultivation. I watched the approach of that screen at the far end and aimed my wheels for the single-lane dirt road, invisible now, that led to the only destination I could think of on such short notice.
I kept the engine running so the hot air would keep blowing, so I could get her out of her coat.
I found her in the same way I had before but I couldn’t re-obtain the same focus. The world didn’t shrink to her and mine miniscule properties and I found my thoughts dominated by the shack with its one dark window and the field beside it, a white expanse. It set the scene for something different and I’d supposed she felt it too because her own interest in me seemed less than what it’d been before.
I heard a door pop and felt a cold gust of air. I had my eyes closed to shut out what lay around us (my brain might work better if I did), but I opened them then to see flying backwards as if she were being pulled almost but her body shifted and turned as it crossed the door’s threshold so I could see she moved under her own power. I thought, This is it, a delayed result, but a result nonetheless. Odd that she’d pick this moment to run, but then I saw her turn to give a glance back and the clump of her boots slowed as if to beckon.
I found myself shuffling across the island between the seats instead of opening my own door and getting out that way. I gave chase because that seemed what she wanted me to do, but unsure enough not to dig into the snow and bound after her at full speed.
She ran zig-zags, hindered by the over-sized waders and throwing up snow at her heels with each overcompensated step.
I caught up to her easily enough and could’ve tackled her to the ground, but at the last second I threw myself wide so that the tips of my fingers just almost came to touch the tips of her fur right before I found myself half-buried in snow. It was dry snow so the cold stood at a buffer, but, still, every inch of exposed skin was soon inflamed, and it didn’t help when she reversed to push a handful of snow into what was the only part of me that had remained unburied.
“No fair,” I said. I couldn’t brush the snow from my nose and cheeks fast enough to keep it from melting and stinging all the way to the middles of my ears.
I jumped up, a little angry, a little exhilarated because she had just given me permission, I felt, for what I was about to do next. I caught up with her again and caught her at the knees, bringing her down as gently as I could as I preceded her in contact with the ground. Somehow I had driven her out of one of her waders, revealing one pink sock emblazoned with strawberries (no comment), and was merciful enough to allow her to reach for it and begin to pull it back on before continuing my attack.
At first, I was going to shove snow in her face for doing the same to me, but thought that might be too cruel, so instead I used my weight to push her down into the snow since her instinct was the same as mine, to stay as far above as possible. She made a deep indentation and closed her eyes to await further punishment. I hadn’t noticed until that moment how hard I was breathing or how fast my heart was pounding, and I doubted it had much to do with physical exertion.
Her body felt very tense under me.
I needed to know where things were going to go next.
“What time do you leave?” I asked.
She opened her eyes and looked at me as if the question didn’t make any sense.
She said, “The bus’ll probably be late anyway.”
“But what time?”
I had to feel her shrug through my hands pinning her down and take that as my only answer.
Her eyes were green. I’d thought they’d been blue before, but they were green now, maybe some trick of the light, and I thought I could see myself hovering over her reflected in their centers.
“Could you let me up?”
I leant over and kissed her. I felt I had to take something by force, even if it was something she had given me already. She didn’t move against me or struggle and I took everything I could in one long moment: the way her hair smelled of citrus and vanilla, the tiny portholes of her nostrils that somehow channeled enough oxygen in and out of her, the uneven crescents of her fingernails, the heat radiating from her crotch as I kept one leg wedged in the junction of her thighs, and the dry skin of her chapped lips that no amount of spit could disguise.
Then I allowed her up and brushed the snow from her back and hair, and she finally got the dislocated wader the rest of the way on. There was no point in hanging around any longer. We walked back to the car, as if by some unspoken agreement, and got into and interior that had become just as cold as it was outside, the heater not working so well when you leave one door standing open. I piloted the car out to the road and pointed it back toward town.
I had grown dark early and the headlights illuminated specks of white as they swept in to tap at the windshield and fly past the windows. We came into downtown the same way we had left and the tires crunched the snow beneath as they headed toward the bus depot.
Businesses were closing up and I eased the car against a hard ledge of curb just past a bench enclosed in a corrugated-steel roofed structure. We both looked at it through the windows. Snow had drifted up around its base and filtered through the boards leaving behind pillows of white resting on the seat. I told her she could wait for the bus in my car and everything around us became empty and light was cast from the street corners in false halo that pervaded everything.
I had to know.
“Will you come back?” I asked.
She looked at me in a way that could’ve been terror or frustration.
“No,” she said. “I don’t think so.”
We left it at that. The thought of losing her wasn’t so terrible. There were probably girls like her all over the place.
I turned the headlights off and kept the radio low to leave my head swimming through the melodies. The afternoon seemed like forever ago when the only thing on my mind had been a new battery and lens cleaner. I knew I still had that image of her in my camera, knew I had proof that she existed at least at one time. I looked at the camera where it laid face-down into a cup holder.
It was then that headlights appeared at the end of the street and I saw the shape of her bus come rolling toward the stop. Inside the bus the lights were on and I didn’t see anyone else besides the driver. I thought of her riding all the way back to New York on the bus alone and staring out of the window as white landscapes rolled on by and the cold air rushed just inches from her face.
She got out of the car with just a, “Bye,” and shut the door. I noticed for the first time that she didn’t have any bags or luggage, though she had to’ve had at least one change of clothes I figured. Unless she came to visit just for the day, but all the way from New York?
I watched as she went over to the door and climbed on without looking back even once, and I saw her walk the aisle between the seats which I could see now held a few other passengers, and she sat in a seat on the side opposite of me so when the bus rolled away I couldn’t see her at all.
Of course I searched the phonebook for any Lawleys the next day after I woke up but didn’t find anyone with that name or any name that sounded close to it. I even tried entering her name into Google Search but I didn’t know enough about her to pick this one Sarah Lawley from the bunch, even when I added “New York” to the search criteria. It was a fake name anyway, I was sure of it, so I forced myself away from making any further inquiries and focused on starting a new project. Except I was pretty much snowed in and there wasn’t much to do around the house.
I found myself dragging my feet through the snow a lot and throwing myself down into the blanket, only to pick myself up and do it again. It was physical enough to be entertaining in a mindless way.
I’d still had that little piece of her left over on my camera. Her face and the sound of my voice. ‘Because you’re very interesting to me.’ Her face hidden behind her hands.
I deleted that once I came across it again after fooling myself into forgetting about it. “Are you sure you want to erase? Y/N.” As if I could hurt her by eradicating every last trace.
Whatever.
THE END
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Two Poems (That Sort of Rhyme)
"We've Still Got the Rain (Our Song Without Music)"
You said you would teach me
About the fish in the sea
All darting movement
And liquid bodies
But we don't talk that much anymore
No, it's no one's fault
We just don't go there anymore
Those late-night walks to the liquor store
Now you said it was okay
I'd be better off without you
All those different people
With faces that remind me of you
Hanging
Around
Don't know them
As well
As I know you
But the winter's cold
With the icy snows
And the summer's
Hot and dry
I only go
To New Mexico
When it feels
Like I could die
And you would sing
About the fallen leaves
As those autumn days
Passed us by
So...
Come on, Come on
We've got the rain
Come on, come on
We've got the rain
Come on, come on
We've got the rain
And it's falling slow
Now these days after you disappeared
I still stay her
And wait for you to pick up the phone
Yeah, sometimes we talk
But it's about nothing at all
Just hi, hey, how's the weather?
I'd invite you over, but I know you've got plans
And someone else you would like to meet
You could stay the night
I think that'd be alright
It's not like it's hurting anything
But in the morning
You'll open you eyes
And slip from the door
Out to the street
So I'll watch and wait
As you hesitate
Before crossing
To the other side
You and him will meet
On a taxi seat
And tell what only strangers
Could confide
And you'll drive
To someplace safe
Where you'll
Forget about last night
But...
Come on, come on
We've got the rain
Come on, come on
We've got the rain
Come on, come on
We've got the rain
And it's falling slow
Against the glass
On the pane
Of my window
Carrying thoughts
Like drugs
Like ecstasy
Washing it back
Washing it away
Until it's gone
Just lying here
In my bed
Staring there
Can't think of
Something not said
Getting cold
Getting hot
Getting a headache
Thinking I should leave
Thinking I should stay
Thick of bodies
My own
Someone else's
Might be yours
Not thinking
Yeah
And
But
No
Yet
Coming to the conclusion
So
Nor
We
Or
You
Finally empty of everything
Come on, come on
We've still got the rain
Come on, come on
We've still got the rain
Come on, come on
We've still got the rain
And it's falling slow
"All My Plans Fell Through"
Silence sounds shrilling
In the quiet spaces
Filled only with the passing of time
Through a doorway
I saw it as an infant
Wailing out a chorus line
As my thoughts bubble
To the surface
And conspire to leave me confused
The path of this story
Is endless
I only follow it long enough to keep me amused
Bitter sounds
Crashing like waves
On the shores
My consciousness made
Stuck somewhere past the beginning
Not quite further enough yet
Somewhere echoes a wailing
That shares its tone with my own regret
Somehow I handed over the number
My brain kept it memorized
Still don't know how this happened
Away in the land of
Nothing buried
Empires ending
The suns setting in the skies
You said you would teach me
About the fish in the sea
All darting movement
And liquid bodies
But we don't talk that much anymore
No, it's no one's fault
We just don't go there anymore
Those late-night walks to the liquor store
Now you said it was okay
I'd be better off without you
All those different people
With faces that remind me of you
Hanging
Around
Don't know them
As well
As I know you
But the winter's cold
With the icy snows
And the summer's
Hot and dry
I only go
To New Mexico
When it feels
Like I could die
And you would sing
About the fallen leaves
As those autumn days
Passed us by
So...
Come on, Come on
We've got the rain
Come on, come on
We've got the rain
Come on, come on
We've got the rain
And it's falling slow
Now these days after you disappeared
I still stay her
And wait for you to pick up the phone
Yeah, sometimes we talk
But it's about nothing at all
Just hi, hey, how's the weather?
I'd invite you over, but I know you've got plans
And someone else you would like to meet
You could stay the night
I think that'd be alright
It's not like it's hurting anything
But in the morning
You'll open you eyes
And slip from the door
Out to the street
So I'll watch and wait
As you hesitate
Before crossing
To the other side
You and him will meet
On a taxi seat
And tell what only strangers
Could confide
And you'll drive
To someplace safe
Where you'll
Forget about last night
But...
Come on, come on
We've got the rain
Come on, come on
We've got the rain
Come on, come on
We've got the rain
And it's falling slow
Against the glass
On the pane
Of my window
Carrying thoughts
Like drugs
Like ecstasy
Washing it back
Washing it away
Until it's gone
Just lying here
In my bed
Staring there
Can't think of
Something not said
Getting cold
Getting hot
Getting a headache
Thinking I should leave
Thinking I should stay
Thick of bodies
My own
Someone else's
Might be yours
Not thinking
Yeah
And
But
No
Yet
Coming to the conclusion
So
Nor
We
Or
You
Finally empty of everything
Come on, come on
We've still got the rain
Come on, come on
We've still got the rain
Come on, come on
We've still got the rain
And it's falling slow
"All My Plans Fell Through"
Silence sounds shrilling
In the quiet spaces
Filled only with the passing of time
Through a doorway
I saw it as an infant
Wailing out a chorus line
As my thoughts bubble
To the surface
And conspire to leave me confused
The path of this story
Is endless
I only follow it long enough to keep me amused
Bitter sounds
Crashing like waves
On the shores
My consciousness made
Stuck somewhere past the beginning
Not quite further enough yet
Somewhere echoes a wailing
That shares its tone with my own regret
Somehow I handed over the number
My brain kept it memorized
Still don't know how this happened
Away in the land of
Nothing buried
Empires ending
The suns setting in the skies
Sunday, September 7, 2008
"The Sky Just Cracked Open and the World Turned a Final Time, Or, This Feels Too Good"
The sun just exploded
But we'll keep dancing anyway
'Cause this feeling's too good to waste.
Heaven is calling for us,
All the angels with their scrubbed wings,
But I'll just grin and bear it
And you'll just grin and bear it.
And we'll go down into the valley
Walking barefoot on the hot sands
And laugh at the scorpions
Who try to sting
And the snakes
Who try to bite
But are too afraid now
To do anything.
You and me and no one else
Will step lightly across a lake bottom
Gone dry in the middle of August,
With the fish suspended in the air
Like flapping stars
As the planet hurtles downward
Into some unknowable abyss.
And the final souls
Are reaching for salvation
But we'll still be holding hands
And taking refuge in a cave
That sends our voices back at us
Colored with the spectrum of human emotion,
Because the two of us have to encompass it all now.
And we'll feel and find and dig our way
To the middle of the earth
And find it's a hollowed out husk
That we'll make our home
As millions of years of history
Crumble around us
And stars wink out
And the universe twists in the middle
With everything collapsing to nothing.
And we'll dance when we're just molecules,
Reduced to atoms,
Crushed into a shiny orb
That holds everything that was, is, and will ever be.
And from us
Existence will be made anew.
But we'll keep dancing anyway
'Cause this feeling's too good to waste.
Heaven is calling for us,
All the angels with their scrubbed wings,
But I'll just grin and bear it
And you'll just grin and bear it.
And we'll go down into the valley
Walking barefoot on the hot sands
And laugh at the scorpions
Who try to sting
And the snakes
Who try to bite
But are too afraid now
To do anything.
You and me and no one else
Will step lightly across a lake bottom
Gone dry in the middle of August,
With the fish suspended in the air
Like flapping stars
As the planet hurtles downward
Into some unknowable abyss.
And the final souls
Are reaching for salvation
But we'll still be holding hands
And taking refuge in a cave
That sends our voices back at us
Colored with the spectrum of human emotion,
Because the two of us have to encompass it all now.
And we'll feel and find and dig our way
To the middle of the earth
And find it's a hollowed out husk
That we'll make our home
As millions of years of history
Crumble around us
And stars wink out
And the universe twists in the middle
With everything collapsing to nothing.
And we'll dance when we're just molecules,
Reduced to atoms,
Crushed into a shiny orb
That holds everything that was, is, and will ever be.
And from us
Existence will be made anew.
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Stare into the Sun
This is the boy
Who was born out of pain
And rejected his humanity
To build a wall around his soul,
And his eyes were
Both fire and ice
Betraying every feeling
He ever felt.
Now the oceans quake
With the longing that he feels
To look into someone else’s eyes
And see the same misery
That has so bound him
To this terrorized life of
Emotions
That keep him sleepless
Most nights.
Walking the road less traveled,
Stopping in to worship
At churches and bars,
Speaking,
‘This is the seed of your destruction.
Swallow it and let it bloom
Into a flower of pity
Because when the tide rises
I’m not the one who’ll build
The boat of your salvation.’
Silent as the city sleeps
As he keeps afloat
On the waves
Of cocaine dreams and ecstasy.
It’s only a tiny room
But it’s the one
He likes to call home.
‘If I could have you tonight
Would the bile in my stomach
Cease to burn?
What is so resolutely
Present in your presence
That could make me believe
In the fallacy
Of my own fate?’
This is the boy
Who grew up
To be the man
Blinded by the world’s design
And his inability to fit
Himself within the network,
Which kept him from seeing
The exit door
Leading up to the heavens
Where the air is too thin
To hold heavy thoughts
And a state of emptiness
Could give him rest.
Who was born out of pain
And rejected his humanity
To build a wall around his soul,
And his eyes were
Both fire and ice
Betraying every feeling
He ever felt.
Now the oceans quake
With the longing that he feels
To look into someone else’s eyes
And see the same misery
That has so bound him
To this terrorized life of
Emotions
That keep him sleepless
Most nights.
Walking the road less traveled,
Stopping in to worship
At churches and bars,
Speaking,
‘This is the seed of your destruction.
Swallow it and let it bloom
Into a flower of pity
Because when the tide rises
I’m not the one who’ll build
The boat of your salvation.’
Silent as the city sleeps
As he keeps afloat
On the waves
Of cocaine dreams and ecstasy.
It’s only a tiny room
But it’s the one
He likes to call home.
‘If I could have you tonight
Would the bile in my stomach
Cease to burn?
What is so resolutely
Present in your presence
That could make me believe
In the fallacy
Of my own fate?’
This is the boy
Who grew up
To be the man
Blinded by the world’s design
And his inability to fit
Himself within the network,
Which kept him from seeing
The exit door
Leading up to the heavens
Where the air is too thin
To hold heavy thoughts
And a state of emptiness
Could give him rest.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Three Poems
“What Will You Do to Hurt Me?”
How illogical,
How suicidal,
How manic-depressive
Would I have to be
For one emotion
To bleed into the next
And to be explained away
By the one after?
I thought a late-night drive
Would cure my head,
But now everything’s reversed
And my head’s even sicker.
“The Dead and the Damned”
Here’s a story
Of a family,
They were all adopted,
Except they had the same blood.
They knew each other from birth.
They said to each other,
‘It hurts to look at you.’
Their faces were like scars.
They said they loved each other
But they really didn’t.
One tried to bleed
All the blood out
But got dizzy in the process
And so stopped.
Another
Changed her last name
To someone else’s
And left with him
Somewhere else,
But came back
Because
He wasn’t
Who she thought
He was.
Here’s a story
Of a family
Despised.
They hated each other.
In the morning
They left
One by one
So they wouldn’t see each other,
And they came home again
Without a gesture
Or spoken word.
One said,
‘I’m suffocating’
The air had become
Too cloudy,
Was overbearing.
‘I’ll die if I don’t get out.’
The fourth one
Ran away
To the circus probably
Or to sit in the movie theater.
But the police brought him back,
Except without handcuffs
And no tickets
And made him say sorry,
Which he said
But didn’t really mean.
Here’s a story
Of a family.
The last one succeeded,
But left behind a mess
That was easy to clean up
With water
And laundry detergent.
The others
Were a little bit angry
Because
They had agreed
To go together,
And now
They were one less
Than they were
Supposed to be.
The house
Wouldn’t open up
So well anymore
So no light
Wanted to come in
And stay.
The others faded
Away
And left no traces
Of ever
Having
Existed.
“The River”
The river
Leads a crooked path
Straight
And the birds’ calls
In the trees
Sounds like laughter
Falling upon
Ears
Haunted by memories
Of fire-soaked
Boundaries
Led astray.
The river runs
And burbles,
And the shallow hand
Clutches
Stones that lie
At the bottom
Waiting
To be picked out
And examined
By the eye acute
To naming
Substances
And minerals
That couldn’t
Possibly
Exist.
The river washes
Away
Into the sea
And disappears
In tendrils
And currents.
And pieces
Splash
Against the coast
Where lighthouses
Flash
Their lonely cries
And sigh
Relief
When the night
Is done
And the sun
Cuts open
The day anew
And sets
In motion
The machinations
By which it will
Set
Once again.
How illogical,
How suicidal,
How manic-depressive
Would I have to be
For one emotion
To bleed into the next
And to be explained away
By the one after?
I thought a late-night drive
Would cure my head,
But now everything’s reversed
And my head’s even sicker.
“The Dead and the Damned”
Here’s a story
Of a family,
They were all adopted,
Except they had the same blood.
They knew each other from birth.
They said to each other,
‘It hurts to look at you.’
Their faces were like scars.
They said they loved each other
But they really didn’t.
One tried to bleed
All the blood out
But got dizzy in the process
And so stopped.
Another
Changed her last name
To someone else’s
And left with him
Somewhere else,
But came back
Because
He wasn’t
Who she thought
He was.
Here’s a story
Of a family
Despised.
They hated each other.
In the morning
They left
One by one
So they wouldn’t see each other,
And they came home again
Without a gesture
Or spoken word.
One said,
‘I’m suffocating’
The air had become
Too cloudy,
Was overbearing.
‘I’ll die if I don’t get out.’
The fourth one
Ran away
To the circus probably
Or to sit in the movie theater.
But the police brought him back,
Except without handcuffs
And no tickets
And made him say sorry,
Which he said
But didn’t really mean.
Here’s a story
Of a family.
The last one succeeded,
But left behind a mess
That was easy to clean up
With water
And laundry detergent.
The others
Were a little bit angry
Because
They had agreed
To go together,
And now
They were one less
Than they were
Supposed to be.
The house
Wouldn’t open up
So well anymore
So no light
Wanted to come in
And stay.
The others faded
Away
And left no traces
Of ever
Having
Existed.
“The River”
The river
Leads a crooked path
Straight
And the birds’ calls
In the trees
Sounds like laughter
Falling upon
Ears
Haunted by memories
Of fire-soaked
Boundaries
Led astray.
The river runs
And burbles,
And the shallow hand
Clutches
Stones that lie
At the bottom
Waiting
To be picked out
And examined
By the eye acute
To naming
Substances
And minerals
That couldn’t
Possibly
Exist.
The river washes
Away
Into the sea
And disappears
In tendrils
And currents.
And pieces
Splash
Against the coast
Where lighthouses
Flash
Their lonely cries
And sigh
Relief
When the night
Is done
And the sun
Cuts open
The day anew
And sets
In motion
The machinations
By which it will
Set
Once again.
Friday, June 27, 2008
That was the night...
...the band didn't play and she wasted her virginity on a college student who said he wanted to be a painter except he hadn’t painted a single thing in his entire life and he bored her with the names of famous painters and he numbed her with his dreams of Italy and Spain and France and all the European countries where romance was thought to be found and she listened through an alcohol haze as his travels brought him to the peaks of the Himalayas and then she didn't listen anymore and instead wound up with him on the laundry room floor, naked and breathing into his mouth, trying to be quiet as footsteps crossed back and forth outside the door.
Afterward, she put all her clothes back on and left the college student behind still trying to find his left shoe, which had somehow gotten wedged behind the dryer, and she swam through the sea of bodies into the kitchen where the lead singer had tucked himself away into a safe corner and stared out at a scene of bodies huddled around the kitchen table making sloppy work of a drinking game whose rules deteriorated with every loss/win.
"I need the keys," she says, holding out her hand and trying to keep it steady even as the world tilts slightly to the right and threatens to sweep her away with it.
"I don't have them," he says.
He watches her movements as she brings her hand slowly back to her side and she steps close into him as someone brushes past behind her and for a second her mouth is really close to his and he can smell whatever she has been drinking and she closes her eyes and moves back when there was room enough to move.
"Where are the keys? I need the keys."
The keys are in the jacket that used to be his jacket but is her jacket now and the jacket's been lost, but he finds it after five minutes of searching slung over a potted plant and the cuff of one sleeve damp with what is unmistakably urine and he takes the keys out of the pocket and carries the jacket back to her and lets her put it on without saying a word. She sniffs the cuff of the jacket and stares at the keys in his hand and she thinks about making a dive for them but she knows that dive could potentially turn into a spill and she just waits until the look in his eyes says that he's not going to hand them over.
"Give me the keys," she says.
"I need to talk to you."
"So talk." She puts a finger in the middle of his forehead and runs it down until she reaches the tip of his nose. "What do you want to talk about?"
They go out to the van, which is parked up against the curb directly in front of the house where the party's being held, and she goes around to the driver's side and gets in as he climbs in on the passenger's side. He still has the keys but she a fingernail into the ignition and gently tries to turn it without success and without the belief of success.
"So talk," she says, and waits, and adjusts the mirror until she can see his eyes staring out of the passenger side window and for a second his reflection looks back at her but not for long and she can't tell what he's thinking.
When he doesn't say anything she places both hands on the steering wheel and makes engine noises and steps down on the pedals so that they wheeze and the street flashes red behind them. Eventually pressure builds up behind the brake pedal and locks it firmly into place and she taps it with one foot and stares out at the street ahead of her and all the sounds die from her throat and they can hear a pounding coming from the house where someone is using a wooden cooking spoon to bang on the drums as the drummer pushes her way through the crowd to make him stop. Soon the lead guitar player joins her, hugging his guitar like an infant and carrying it back to the first floor landing where it becomes like an anchor as couples slip past upstairs and don't come down again.
The lead singer hands her the keys even though she hadn't asked for them since they were in the kitchen and she just stares at them like they're something that appeared out of nowhere into her hand and for a moment she just attaches destinations to each piece of metal and fingers the moose head key fob that came from somewhere but she can't remember where from anymore.
"Aren't you going to talk?" she asks.
"No."
She doesn't turn to look at him but when she finally puts the key in the ignition and goes to adjust the mirror she can see that the corners of his eyes are wet and the irises stare out brightly betraying the roiling energy that she can now feel spilling over the edge of his seat and lapping onto hers. She sets the mirror so that she can see just the roof of the car parked behind her and then takes her time as she brings the van from park to drive.
She breathes as she cranks the wheel all the way to the left and eases up on the brake pedal until the van begins creeping away from the curb and out into the street until she's far away enough from the cars parked on either side to ease up completely.
"So, where are we going?" she asks.
"You're the one who's driving."
"But you came along. I thought you might want to go somewhere in particular."
"No."
She follows the streets unable to to figure out in which direction they're going in and unwilling to look at the MapQuest directions she used to get here. They end up downtown where most of the doors are shut and locked up tight but lights still burn inside giving some kind of semblance of life still going on behind the scenes and he tells her to turn right at the next street corner and keep going until they hit the highway where he tells her to turn left. She lets the speedometer get up to seventy before leveling out and letting the needle dip slightly before it settles at sixty-eight. The van's entire frame shakes and rattles but she doesn't let up, wanting him to say the first word but he never does and they're in the darkness between towns with the road unfurling in front of them and reflective signs glowing in the distance.
"So what was his name? Did you even learn his name?" He tries not to sound bitter but his voice is alien even to his own ears now and he can't quite pick up on the vague nuances that should be so familiar by now.
"Brett. He said his name was Brett when he came up to me," she says. "Or Brent, I wasn't really listening."
Old country roads lead off the highway at ninety-degree angles and street signs appear too quickly to be read and when he tells her to turn off onto one of them she doesn't see it until it comes racing out of the dark at her.
She knows it's already too late but her body responds before her mind reacts, pressing slightly on the brake and cranking the wheel all the way over, and for a second that could've lasted much longer there's the sickening wave of sweat and fear as the van's weight begins to shift and the light cast ahead dances across long blades of grass that blur into a sea. Everything comes apart in her head, shatters, and the fragments fly loose and sting the backs of her eyes and somewhere between now and now-before her foot's sunk all the way down and the wheels have locked into position dragging gravel and dust and flinging it into the air.
The van takes a nosedive into the ditch and crumples a bit on one corner, leaving the engine jerked and shuddering until it shudders to a stop. Then silence that won't filled but any other sound for the next five minutes, except for the sounds of their breathing.
"It's over, isn't it?" he asks.
She reaches for the key and turns it, but it comes up dead every time.
"The engine won't start," she says. "I think I killed it."
His hand finds the handle on the door and jerks it open and his body spills out into the cool night air. He moves around through the long grass far enough to see that one headlight's smashed and the other remains lit and the van's tipped at such an angle that it would but impossible to get it out without the help of a tow truck.
A few seconds later she gets out of the van as well, but walks back onto the road instead of joining him in the grass.
"How bad is it?" she calls.
"Not too bad. Just some dents and a broken headlight as far as I can see."
"But the engine won't start."
"I know."
He looks back at the highway, which lies just twenty feet away, through the dust that still hangs in the air, and he looks the other way where the country road fades into darkness, and he pushes his way through the grass around to the driver's side of the van and pulls the keys from the ignition. She almost doesn't catch the keys when he throws them at her, unready for them to come flying at her, and the slap of metal on skin sounds uncertain.
"Where are we going?" she asks.
He walks in the other direction, away from the highway and into the darkness, and she follows behind him putting the keys in the jacket's pocket and zipping up the zipper. The van falls away behind them where it probably won't be seen or messed with until the sun's up and sends sharp sparks off the side mirrors. He doesn't say anything and their footfalls shift the gravel beneath them and the stars in the sky only provide enough light to send the shadows, thick like water, into wherever the road dips enough to give sanctuary.
It's only fifteen minutes before the shape of the house begins to draw itself out of the black and its size remains an illusion until they get near it because it's only when they're at the front door that she can see its height is the only immense thing about it.
The house used to belong to one of his uncles, married and divorced twice, no kids, always going on excursions whose details were muddy to everyone but him. The lead singer had only been out here once or twice as a kid, and then again after the funeral when anything of value was being hauled away, but its location somehow remained firm in his mind and it was only a sudden turn in his inner compass that brought them here. He honestly couldn't remember a single detail about the uncle's face or the way he spoke or at one point he hovered around at on the scale of drunkenness at family get-togethers but his house remained almost unchanged from the way that the lead singer remembered it.
He doesn't say any of this to her and when he goes to touch the door it pushes inward from someone already having broken in once looking for any pawnable items the might've got left behind.
He leads the way and he leads it a bit too fast because she loses him as he turns through a doorway and the sound of his footsteps fall away from her. She keeps one hand feeling along the wall and the toe of her shoe crunches on glass from fallen and shattered picture frame and she picks it up but can't make out the shapes within it into any knowable form and she finds the nail where it once hung and she hangs it back up again. Then she passes through the doorway he passed through but she doesn't see him there and she can't hear him anymore and in the darkness there is what must be a table with chairs around it and on the table is a number of small vases arranged in no particular order and she sits down in one of the chairs and picks up one of the vases, none of which hold any flowers, and sniffs the mouth of it.
There's a chugging sound from somewhere deep within the house and the light bulb set in the ceiling above her head flickers and glows and lights up and the beer bottle in her hand is coated with dust and the last drops inside of long since evaporated leaving behind the smell that's already on its way out.
He enters the room from a second doorway and she puts the bottle back down on the table into the ring it left behind and she stares at him and he just says, "Gas-powered generator. Don't know how long it'll hold out, though."
He comes over and sits down in a chair across from her and begins pushing bottles away so he can see her more clearly.
"My uncle killed himself in this room," he says.
"Oh." She looks around and tries to pretend like she's interested. "Is that supposed to be the beginning of a ghost story?"
"Why? Do you think this house is haunted?"
"Maybe." She looks around some more. "Is that where he did it?" She points to the phantom of a stain set into the wallpaper and washed a hundred times over to no avail.
"Yeah. He sat in that chair." He points to the chair at the head of the table. "Shotgun."
"Cliche"
He doesn't know how to respond to that, so he just shrugs and doesn't say anything.
"You're kinda starting to piss me off," she says.
The light in the room dims for a few moments and then retrieves its previous lustre.
"Why?"
"Why the fuck did you bring me out here for?"
"I didn't bring you, you came along."
"You said you wanted to talk."
"I did want to talk. We're talking now. We're talking."
She closes her eyes. "Don't pull this bullshit with me right now. Please. I don't need it."
"I'm not trying to pull anything."
Again, the light dims, but it doesn't return this time.
"Okay," he says, "why did you sleep with guy?"
A smile crosses her lips and he can hear a just audible snicker exit through her nose and her entire face is filled with the pain that she's trying to hold back.
The smile falls away. "No. That's not fair. You can't ask me that."
"Yes. I can. Why?"
She looks away. "I don't know."
"You don't know?"
"He was kinda there and I was kinda there and... I really don't want to talk about this right now."
Her eyes drift along the edge of the table where the wood's been scarred and chipped by years of abuse and now, in the light bulb's dim glow, she can see initials and names and profane poetry carved shallowly into its surface and she reads all the initials and names and poetry but it barely makes sense to her and she tries to bring her eyes back up to meet his gaze but can't quite seem to make it and there's a cushioned chair in the corner with a white cloth thrown over it like a make-believe ghost and she thinks how nice it would be just to hide underneath it.
She does meet his gaze, and his eyes are hard, harder than she thought they could ever be.
"So it was just a proximity thing," he says. "It really could've been anyone."
He waits a few moments to allow her to answer before he says, "Right? Am I right?"
And she begins to laugh, but her laughter turns to tears and the tears run out of her eyes and leave dark trails across her face.
"Don't do this to me. Please. Can't we just...? I don't want to be here anymore."
Something is trying to break inside him and he won't let it. The generator finally fails and the light dies, easing them back into the darkness of before where her face becomes just another shadow in a room full of them and even the sound of her sobs seem muted by the black.
"You haven't told me why yet," he says.
There's the sound of breaking glass and for a second he believes that one of the bottles must've fallen off the table but slowly he begins to feel a stinging along the side of his arm and when he looks down in the faint light he can just make out the glitter of tiny fragments set into the surface of the skin. He looks around to see in what direction the bottle was aimed at but it's too dark and when he looks back he can see the outline of her standing up and the glint of another bottle sailing straight for his head.
It catches him on the cheekbone but doesn't break, instead glancing off onto the floor where still it doesn't break and it rolls away until it reaches the wall.
"Why couldn't you do it?" she asks, suddenly calm. "Why at the last fucking possible second did you decide that you couldn't do it?"
That was the night that was supposed to be bigger than all the other nights because that was night when they were supposed to play in front of an actual audience. That was supposed to be the first gig in a string of gigs that would take them out of the basements and living rooms and into the clubs where their music would be heard by those who had a little bit of swing in the music business and from there it would be record deals and private jets and crowded stadiums that would vibrate with the reverberations of their instruments. But only if they could get through that first gig.
They started the opening song twice before it became apparent that his voice refused to join the melody and they made a few more attempts after that, their eyes staring into the back of his skull and urging him to make some kind of noise that they could push forward on but after five minutes he abandoned the microphone and slipped off into the crowd that was already beginning to disband and drift away into the other corners of the house. Watching him go she wanted to call out to him but feedback was already starting to whine loud through the amps the sound of it bore into her head and made it hard to think and when she turned it off it left the room too quiet and by that time she couldn't see where he had went.
One by one, they abandoned their posts as well and went their separate ways, none of them wishing to be around the other two and as she moved away between the waves of bodies someone place an unopened can of beer into her hand which she popped open and began to drink greedily from.
She saw him again then, keeping his head low as he moved into the kitchen, but she decided that she didn't want to follow.
"You want to know why I slept with him?" she asks. "Someone was supposed to get lucky tonight and you made it very clear that it wasn't going to be you."
She wasted her virginity on a college student whose face she could no longer remember but already long before that night she had made the decision it was the lead singer's to take once they had performed their first live set.
She says, "You could've mumbled the lyrics to all the songs, I wouldn't of given a flying fuck. Because at least then we could've gotten to play our songs."
Her voice cracks on the last sentence and she sits down again. Every muscle in her body screams at her to run from room but her mind tells her there's nowhere to run to. He listens as her tears resume, only quieter now as she tries to hold them in.
It feels like someone's pushed a skewer into his chest and is applying light, rhythmic pressure on it with the beating of his heart.
"I'm sorry," he whispers, but the corners of his mind have melted away and he's not so sure what he's sorry about and every time he tries to grab onto what it could be it keeps sinking away from him.
He moves from the table and through the doorway out into the hall and outside where he stands in the dusty driveway staring at the trees that move on the other side of the road and he feels the breeze that they move with and lets it cool the sweat that has appeared on the back of his neck.
She comes out as well a few minutes later but doesn't move much beyond the front doorway and he pretends not to know that she's there and when he begins walking she follows far enough and quietly enough behind him to maintain the illusion. She watches his body for any signs of anger but she can't find any and when they reach the broken down van he passes right by it like he doesn't see it and she gives it glance and then forgets about it too. But when he reaches the highway he stops right before stepping onto its shoulder and stands there looking across its expanse that seems to flow like a dark, motionless river.
"I'm not sure we could make it back before the party dies down," he says. "Tamara and Jonathan will probably take off in her car and we'll be stranded anyway."
He pauses for a moment to wipe his nose and to give her time to think over what he's just said. She doesn't think she understands.
He turns around and walks back to the van and opens one of its back doors and climbs inside. It's only from a look that he gives her that she decides to climb inside too and from that look she can find nothing neither friendly nor hateful and because of the angle the van sits at they lay with their feet planted against the backs of the seats and the blankets they use are the ones used to wrap up the pieces of Tamara's drum kit so that they don't shift and move and clash together as the vehicle makes its way to its destination.
He's the one who falls asleep first, his breathing disappearing into the drone of bugs moving around outside through the grass and through the air and she stays awake a long time beside him trying not to move in case she might wake him up again. At some point during the early morning before the birds begin to sing their waking song she starts crying silently and falls asleep crying so that the tears dry salty on her face and leave her with a mask of fitful sleep.
When they wake again they move without saying a word and by the time the police cruiser arrives, having gotten a report of a stranded vehicle just twenty minutes before, they're already half a mile down the road.
Afterward, she put all her clothes back on and left the college student behind still trying to find his left shoe, which had somehow gotten wedged behind the dryer, and she swam through the sea of bodies into the kitchen where the lead singer had tucked himself away into a safe corner and stared out at a scene of bodies huddled around the kitchen table making sloppy work of a drinking game whose rules deteriorated with every loss/win.
"I need the keys," she says, holding out her hand and trying to keep it steady even as the world tilts slightly to the right and threatens to sweep her away with it.
"I don't have them," he says.
He watches her movements as she brings her hand slowly back to her side and she steps close into him as someone brushes past behind her and for a second her mouth is really close to his and he can smell whatever she has been drinking and she closes her eyes and moves back when there was room enough to move.
"Where are the keys? I need the keys."
The keys are in the jacket that used to be his jacket but is her jacket now and the jacket's been lost, but he finds it after five minutes of searching slung over a potted plant and the cuff of one sleeve damp with what is unmistakably urine and he takes the keys out of the pocket and carries the jacket back to her and lets her put it on without saying a word. She sniffs the cuff of the jacket and stares at the keys in his hand and she thinks about making a dive for them but she knows that dive could potentially turn into a spill and she just waits until the look in his eyes says that he's not going to hand them over.
"Give me the keys," she says.
"I need to talk to you."
"So talk." She puts a finger in the middle of his forehead and runs it down until she reaches the tip of his nose. "What do you want to talk about?"
They go out to the van, which is parked up against the curb directly in front of the house where the party's being held, and she goes around to the driver's side and gets in as he climbs in on the passenger's side. He still has the keys but she a fingernail into the ignition and gently tries to turn it without success and without the belief of success.
"So talk," she says, and waits, and adjusts the mirror until she can see his eyes staring out of the passenger side window and for a second his reflection looks back at her but not for long and she can't tell what he's thinking.
When he doesn't say anything she places both hands on the steering wheel and makes engine noises and steps down on the pedals so that they wheeze and the street flashes red behind them. Eventually pressure builds up behind the brake pedal and locks it firmly into place and she taps it with one foot and stares out at the street ahead of her and all the sounds die from her throat and they can hear a pounding coming from the house where someone is using a wooden cooking spoon to bang on the drums as the drummer pushes her way through the crowd to make him stop. Soon the lead guitar player joins her, hugging his guitar like an infant and carrying it back to the first floor landing where it becomes like an anchor as couples slip past upstairs and don't come down again.
The lead singer hands her the keys even though she hadn't asked for them since they were in the kitchen and she just stares at them like they're something that appeared out of nowhere into her hand and for a moment she just attaches destinations to each piece of metal and fingers the moose head key fob that came from somewhere but she can't remember where from anymore.
"Aren't you going to talk?" she asks.
"No."
She doesn't turn to look at him but when she finally puts the key in the ignition and goes to adjust the mirror she can see that the corners of his eyes are wet and the irises stare out brightly betraying the roiling energy that she can now feel spilling over the edge of his seat and lapping onto hers. She sets the mirror so that she can see just the roof of the car parked behind her and then takes her time as she brings the van from park to drive.
She breathes as she cranks the wheel all the way to the left and eases up on the brake pedal until the van begins creeping away from the curb and out into the street until she's far away enough from the cars parked on either side to ease up completely.
"So, where are we going?" she asks.
"You're the one who's driving."
"But you came along. I thought you might want to go somewhere in particular."
"No."
She follows the streets unable to to figure out in which direction they're going in and unwilling to look at the MapQuest directions she used to get here. They end up downtown where most of the doors are shut and locked up tight but lights still burn inside giving some kind of semblance of life still going on behind the scenes and he tells her to turn right at the next street corner and keep going until they hit the highway where he tells her to turn left. She lets the speedometer get up to seventy before leveling out and letting the needle dip slightly before it settles at sixty-eight. The van's entire frame shakes and rattles but she doesn't let up, wanting him to say the first word but he never does and they're in the darkness between towns with the road unfurling in front of them and reflective signs glowing in the distance.
"So what was his name? Did you even learn his name?" He tries not to sound bitter but his voice is alien even to his own ears now and he can't quite pick up on the vague nuances that should be so familiar by now.
"Brett. He said his name was Brett when he came up to me," she says. "Or Brent, I wasn't really listening."
Old country roads lead off the highway at ninety-degree angles and street signs appear too quickly to be read and when he tells her to turn off onto one of them she doesn't see it until it comes racing out of the dark at her.
She knows it's already too late but her body responds before her mind reacts, pressing slightly on the brake and cranking the wheel all the way over, and for a second that could've lasted much longer there's the sickening wave of sweat and fear as the van's weight begins to shift and the light cast ahead dances across long blades of grass that blur into a sea. Everything comes apart in her head, shatters, and the fragments fly loose and sting the backs of her eyes and somewhere between now and now-before her foot's sunk all the way down and the wheels have locked into position dragging gravel and dust and flinging it into the air.
The van takes a nosedive into the ditch and crumples a bit on one corner, leaving the engine jerked and shuddering until it shudders to a stop. Then silence that won't filled but any other sound for the next five minutes, except for the sounds of their breathing.
"It's over, isn't it?" he asks.
She reaches for the key and turns it, but it comes up dead every time.
"The engine won't start," she says. "I think I killed it."
His hand finds the handle on the door and jerks it open and his body spills out into the cool night air. He moves around through the long grass far enough to see that one headlight's smashed and the other remains lit and the van's tipped at such an angle that it would but impossible to get it out without the help of a tow truck.
A few seconds later she gets out of the van as well, but walks back onto the road instead of joining him in the grass.
"How bad is it?" she calls.
"Not too bad. Just some dents and a broken headlight as far as I can see."
"But the engine won't start."
"I know."
He looks back at the highway, which lies just twenty feet away, through the dust that still hangs in the air, and he looks the other way where the country road fades into darkness, and he pushes his way through the grass around to the driver's side of the van and pulls the keys from the ignition. She almost doesn't catch the keys when he throws them at her, unready for them to come flying at her, and the slap of metal on skin sounds uncertain.
"Where are we going?" she asks.
He walks in the other direction, away from the highway and into the darkness, and she follows behind him putting the keys in the jacket's pocket and zipping up the zipper. The van falls away behind them where it probably won't be seen or messed with until the sun's up and sends sharp sparks off the side mirrors. He doesn't say anything and their footfalls shift the gravel beneath them and the stars in the sky only provide enough light to send the shadows, thick like water, into wherever the road dips enough to give sanctuary.
It's only fifteen minutes before the shape of the house begins to draw itself out of the black and its size remains an illusion until they get near it because it's only when they're at the front door that she can see its height is the only immense thing about it.
The house used to belong to one of his uncles, married and divorced twice, no kids, always going on excursions whose details were muddy to everyone but him. The lead singer had only been out here once or twice as a kid, and then again after the funeral when anything of value was being hauled away, but its location somehow remained firm in his mind and it was only a sudden turn in his inner compass that brought them here. He honestly couldn't remember a single detail about the uncle's face or the way he spoke or at one point he hovered around at on the scale of drunkenness at family get-togethers but his house remained almost unchanged from the way that the lead singer remembered it.
He doesn't say any of this to her and when he goes to touch the door it pushes inward from someone already having broken in once looking for any pawnable items the might've got left behind.
He leads the way and he leads it a bit too fast because she loses him as he turns through a doorway and the sound of his footsteps fall away from her. She keeps one hand feeling along the wall and the toe of her shoe crunches on glass from fallen and shattered picture frame and she picks it up but can't make out the shapes within it into any knowable form and she finds the nail where it once hung and she hangs it back up again. Then she passes through the doorway he passed through but she doesn't see him there and she can't hear him anymore and in the darkness there is what must be a table with chairs around it and on the table is a number of small vases arranged in no particular order and she sits down in one of the chairs and picks up one of the vases, none of which hold any flowers, and sniffs the mouth of it.
There's a chugging sound from somewhere deep within the house and the light bulb set in the ceiling above her head flickers and glows and lights up and the beer bottle in her hand is coated with dust and the last drops inside of long since evaporated leaving behind the smell that's already on its way out.
He enters the room from a second doorway and she puts the bottle back down on the table into the ring it left behind and she stares at him and he just says, "Gas-powered generator. Don't know how long it'll hold out, though."
He comes over and sits down in a chair across from her and begins pushing bottles away so he can see her more clearly.
"My uncle killed himself in this room," he says.
"Oh." She looks around and tries to pretend like she's interested. "Is that supposed to be the beginning of a ghost story?"
"Why? Do you think this house is haunted?"
"Maybe." She looks around some more. "Is that where he did it?" She points to the phantom of a stain set into the wallpaper and washed a hundred times over to no avail.
"Yeah. He sat in that chair." He points to the chair at the head of the table. "Shotgun."
"Cliche"
He doesn't know how to respond to that, so he just shrugs and doesn't say anything.
"You're kinda starting to piss me off," she says.
The light in the room dims for a few moments and then retrieves its previous lustre.
"Why?"
"Why the fuck did you bring me out here for?"
"I didn't bring you, you came along."
"You said you wanted to talk."
"I did want to talk. We're talking now. We're talking."
She closes her eyes. "Don't pull this bullshit with me right now. Please. I don't need it."
"I'm not trying to pull anything."
Again, the light dims, but it doesn't return this time.
"Okay," he says, "why did you sleep with guy?"
A smile crosses her lips and he can hear a just audible snicker exit through her nose and her entire face is filled with the pain that she's trying to hold back.
The smile falls away. "No. That's not fair. You can't ask me that."
"Yes. I can. Why?"
She looks away. "I don't know."
"You don't know?"
"He was kinda there and I was kinda there and... I really don't want to talk about this right now."
Her eyes drift along the edge of the table where the wood's been scarred and chipped by years of abuse and now, in the light bulb's dim glow, she can see initials and names and profane poetry carved shallowly into its surface and she reads all the initials and names and poetry but it barely makes sense to her and she tries to bring her eyes back up to meet his gaze but can't quite seem to make it and there's a cushioned chair in the corner with a white cloth thrown over it like a make-believe ghost and she thinks how nice it would be just to hide underneath it.
She does meet his gaze, and his eyes are hard, harder than she thought they could ever be.
"So it was just a proximity thing," he says. "It really could've been anyone."
He waits a few moments to allow her to answer before he says, "Right? Am I right?"
And she begins to laugh, but her laughter turns to tears and the tears run out of her eyes and leave dark trails across her face.
"Don't do this to me. Please. Can't we just...? I don't want to be here anymore."
Something is trying to break inside him and he won't let it. The generator finally fails and the light dies, easing them back into the darkness of before where her face becomes just another shadow in a room full of them and even the sound of her sobs seem muted by the black.
"You haven't told me why yet," he says.
There's the sound of breaking glass and for a second he believes that one of the bottles must've fallen off the table but slowly he begins to feel a stinging along the side of his arm and when he looks down in the faint light he can just make out the glitter of tiny fragments set into the surface of the skin. He looks around to see in what direction the bottle was aimed at but it's too dark and when he looks back he can see the outline of her standing up and the glint of another bottle sailing straight for his head.
It catches him on the cheekbone but doesn't break, instead glancing off onto the floor where still it doesn't break and it rolls away until it reaches the wall.
"Why couldn't you do it?" she asks, suddenly calm. "Why at the last fucking possible second did you decide that you couldn't do it?"
That was the night that was supposed to be bigger than all the other nights because that was night when they were supposed to play in front of an actual audience. That was supposed to be the first gig in a string of gigs that would take them out of the basements and living rooms and into the clubs where their music would be heard by those who had a little bit of swing in the music business and from there it would be record deals and private jets and crowded stadiums that would vibrate with the reverberations of their instruments. But only if they could get through that first gig.
They started the opening song twice before it became apparent that his voice refused to join the melody and they made a few more attempts after that, their eyes staring into the back of his skull and urging him to make some kind of noise that they could push forward on but after five minutes he abandoned the microphone and slipped off into the crowd that was already beginning to disband and drift away into the other corners of the house. Watching him go she wanted to call out to him but feedback was already starting to whine loud through the amps the sound of it bore into her head and made it hard to think and when she turned it off it left the room too quiet and by that time she couldn't see where he had went.
One by one, they abandoned their posts as well and went their separate ways, none of them wishing to be around the other two and as she moved away between the waves of bodies someone place an unopened can of beer into her hand which she popped open and began to drink greedily from.
She saw him again then, keeping his head low as he moved into the kitchen, but she decided that she didn't want to follow.
"You want to know why I slept with him?" she asks. "Someone was supposed to get lucky tonight and you made it very clear that it wasn't going to be you."
She wasted her virginity on a college student whose face she could no longer remember but already long before that night she had made the decision it was the lead singer's to take once they had performed their first live set.
She says, "You could've mumbled the lyrics to all the songs, I wouldn't of given a flying fuck. Because at least then we could've gotten to play our songs."
Her voice cracks on the last sentence and she sits down again. Every muscle in her body screams at her to run from room but her mind tells her there's nowhere to run to. He listens as her tears resume, only quieter now as she tries to hold them in.
It feels like someone's pushed a skewer into his chest and is applying light, rhythmic pressure on it with the beating of his heart.
"I'm sorry," he whispers, but the corners of his mind have melted away and he's not so sure what he's sorry about and every time he tries to grab onto what it could be it keeps sinking away from him.
He moves from the table and through the doorway out into the hall and outside where he stands in the dusty driveway staring at the trees that move on the other side of the road and he feels the breeze that they move with and lets it cool the sweat that has appeared on the back of his neck.
She comes out as well a few minutes later but doesn't move much beyond the front doorway and he pretends not to know that she's there and when he begins walking she follows far enough and quietly enough behind him to maintain the illusion. She watches his body for any signs of anger but she can't find any and when they reach the broken down van he passes right by it like he doesn't see it and she gives it glance and then forgets about it too. But when he reaches the highway he stops right before stepping onto its shoulder and stands there looking across its expanse that seems to flow like a dark, motionless river.
"I'm not sure we could make it back before the party dies down," he says. "Tamara and Jonathan will probably take off in her car and we'll be stranded anyway."
He pauses for a moment to wipe his nose and to give her time to think over what he's just said. She doesn't think she understands.
He turns around and walks back to the van and opens one of its back doors and climbs inside. It's only from a look that he gives her that she decides to climb inside too and from that look she can find nothing neither friendly nor hateful and because of the angle the van sits at they lay with their feet planted against the backs of the seats and the blankets they use are the ones used to wrap up the pieces of Tamara's drum kit so that they don't shift and move and clash together as the vehicle makes its way to its destination.
He's the one who falls asleep first, his breathing disappearing into the drone of bugs moving around outside through the grass and through the air and she stays awake a long time beside him trying not to move in case she might wake him up again. At some point during the early morning before the birds begin to sing their waking song she starts crying silently and falls asleep crying so that the tears dry salty on her face and leave her with a mask of fitful sleep.
When they wake again they move without saying a word and by the time the police cruiser arrives, having gotten a report of a stranded vehicle just twenty minutes before, they're already half a mile down the road.
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