The Daughter of Charles (Char-) and Nancy (nai)

The Daughter of Charles (Char-) and Nancy (nai)

            A girl with long, slender legs (her thighs are probably about as long as her arms) with a tan, dusky complexion and blonde, piecey hair that touches just at her sharp V of a  jaw line, pushes her way out of the bottom floor of a sublet two-story house. There’s a light that’s left on upstairs, and Corey, her boyfriend, explains that the upstairs neighbor conveniently works third shift.  She and Corey share the bottom floor.

            She’s got a Smirnoff Ice in hand, and looks wild-eyed, or rather as wild as almond shaped eyes tinted underneath with sleepy bruising can look. She twists a smile from her thin lips. If anyone can flash a grin from ear to ear, it’s her.

            “Who wants to do a shot of tequila with me?!”

This is Charnai.

            She immediately becomes persistent and grabs at my hand like a little girl dragging her favorite stuffed teddy bear to an imaginary tea party. After looking for a minute for something more appropriate to put the tequila in, she settles on two mugs, one green and one orange, and begins pouring the Cuervo Gold.

            “Is that good?”

            The serving is generous, and more than a couple of shots worth, but she slams it back like it’s a single, not seeming to care. I sip cautiously, pop the top off of another Corona, and head to the bathroom.

            I sit down on the padded seat and see directly across from me a metal grated cart with Plexiglas shelves littered with a plastic display of eyelash extensions and a Cottonelle wet wipes container, recycled as a case for her various hair extensions, most blonde, but a few brunette pieces mixed in.  A curling iron, straightening iron, blow dryer, and hair dresser’s comb with its sharp end for easy parting mingled with each other, strewn about with cords intertwined and dangling to rest on one of the three levels of the cart. It made sense when a week later I was invited to her graduation from tech school, where she was studying cosmetology.

            I flush and head back to the group of people outside and notice that she’s hopping from one lap to the next, then finding others to dance with to the bass-cranked stereo that is kept on in the background, and finally she gets to me and throws herself down clumsily onto my lap, puts her arms about my neck and begins to tell me how much she likes me, despite this being our first meeting.  She was camera ready and with camera in hand. Playfully, we joke around about kissing--and we do. She snaps a couple of pictures, and in one pose, she pulls my lip so far from my face that it later looked like she was pulling skin taffy. After a minute or two, she grabs at my hand again and begins to tug me into the house with her.

            “Erin, Come with me.”

            The others around and myself are confused, shooting glances and question marks at each other, not knowing what this girl intends by pulling me in to some place private. My questions are dropped as she persists and then drags me to the bathroom and locks the door. We both have to pee, so she takes to the toilet first and unabashedly. I figured I’d just hover, one pant leg off, over the shower drain. I sit down on the edge of the tub as she pushes her coral camisole and jean covered body against the door.

            “So how are you and Tyler doing?”

            She asks, concerned. I voice my insecurities about the relationship, but was more interested in hearing her talk about Corey, who’s not only her boyfriend, but also Tyler’s best friend . The insecurities about her relationship with him were triggered by my own discontent.

            “He’s so arrogant, you know?” she says.

            Apparently she’d been with him since she was fourteen, a good three to four years by now, and his welcome had been worn out with her, as much as I’d observed that she’d worn her welcome out just the same with him.

            She asks about my trucker tattoo, a memorial piece I’d gotten because of his passing, and from there we’re off on to the topic of dead fathers. Her father had committed suicide when she was young.

            “Everyone kept it from me. They lied.”

            She spoke with a still-hurt, repressed angry passion, citing the lie as one of the reasons why she’d wanted to get away from her family so quickly when she had become a young adult.

            Suddenly, as the conversation slows, she unlocks the bathroom door and leans out of it, peering around to ensure no one else could see. She stretches herself into the room adjacent and pulls out a pack of Light 100 cigarettes.

            “Can I get a light?”

             I hand her my matches. She hands them back and I strike one for my own cigarette. Sometimes there’s nothing like the bond between smokers.

            “Corey doesn’t know I smoke.”

            She lights another immediately after she finishes the previous, and not long after a knock comes at the door.

            “What?!” she yells.

            “Are you smoking?” We hadn’t realized that the window was open, and now Corey’s come to the door.

             She frantically throws the butt in the toilet and flushes, then cautiously opens the door.

            “Nah, Corey, it’s just me.” I interjected, trying to keep her out of trouble.

            “You know, Charnai, I’m not stupid. I just wish you wouldn’t lie to me.” and with that, he walks away and back outside. She closes and locks the door again. She sits for a minute and sighs out of frustration. She began to talk about how hard it is to be herself around him, about having to hide certain habits to keep him from being upset with her. Immediately I remember what Tyler had told me a few days ago.

            “Corey caught her throwing up again.” Caught her, as if she were stealing or seeing someone else, as if it was a habit she could help instead of a disorder.

            “I’ve got to pee!” a voice calls not soon after from the other side. It’s Danny, our curly blonde, dirty-headed and wide-eyed mutual friend. He’s gone from zero to smashed in what little time she and I have been in the bathroom.

            “Can you wait a minute, Danny?”

            He persisted for a minute longer, and then we heard nothing else. Charnai opened the door from where she was sitting on the floor in front of it to find Danny laying face down in the adjacent doorway.

            “Give me my razor.” she whispers.

            “What?”

            “Give me my razor.” Her grin spreads smoothly from side to side as I hand her the razor I found in the tub. She begins to swipe a patch from his leg as Corey comes back inside and toward the bathroom.

            “Aw, Char. Don’t do that!”

            She throws the razor back in the tub as she and Corey try to pick Danny’s dead drunk weight up off of the floor.

            “C’mon Danny! You can go pee now! C’mon! He said he had to pee.”

            Charnai, with a sprightly bounce, heads back outside as Corey puts Danny down for the night. Not soon after, she was missing. It was noticeably quiet.

            “Where’s Charnai?” I ask.

            “Oh, she’s out for the night.” Corey tells me. The tequila had forced her into bed.

            The next day when I went back, I was accosted by their two cats, both with a random stripe of hair missing. I petted them and headed inside where I saw clumps of cat hair on the living room rug and an electric shaver.

            “Isn’t that awful?” Corey said. “ I told her she’d better not touch my cat again.” 

Tyler (tentative)

This is what life is about.

            It’s 3:15 in the morning and I just got in. I’m trying my best to remember the things I narrated inside of my head while in his car. It seems like the things we try the hardest to remember are the first ones we forget. How frustrating, especially for a non-fiction writer who needs to use the honest imagery of the moment.

            Tyler and I spent a lot of time staring up through the windshield. “This feels like such a Jersey thing to do” I said. “Like something from a Saves the Day song.”  One of the images I knew I wanted to remember was the four-headed street lamp in that vast and mostly empty mall parking lot, which resembled stars, as we stared up from our leaned-back seats to the bruised black sky, completely void of natural lights. We spent hours talking, from 9:30 to a trip to a diner because he had to use the bathroom, and back to that parking lot to sit, car parked, our bodies on their sides facing each other, cheeks against the rough, cheap plush seats, as if we were somehow silently whispering secrets. We played through a few of the songs of Sigur Ros, then through the entirety of Jimmy Eat World’s Clarity album. The 16 minute harmonies of “Goodbye Sky Harbor” at the end of that album weren’t enough, then Bright Eyes’ Lifted took its place. Somewhere along the way, with all of our joking around about picking each other’s nose, his index finger was extended, and I took the opportunity to playfully smack his hand away as I laughed. That was the opportunity I needed to ensure that I could get my fingers woven in with his. When “Bowl of Oranges” began to play, he finally got me to sing to him, because before, I had so shyly but adamantly refused to put my vocals on display, claiming to need a couple of drinks before I could even consider it.
          My soprano strained against the stifling quiet inside the car:
"So that's how I learned the lesson/ that everyone's alone./ And your eyes must do some rainin'/ if you're ever going to grow./ But when cryin' don't help,/ you can't compose yourself,/ it's best to compose a poem,/ an honest verse of longing or simple song of hope."

            We  kept our eyes locked, my blue on his brown, but both glistening. We couldn’t help but smile and giggle at the absurdity of all of this, because to think we met three years ago, just a couple of band geeks from Pennsylvania with an intense affinity for music on a tour of Europe, only to end up seeing each other like this after I had seen that his band was playing shows in Allentown, where I was now going to school.

            The tour of Europe had been the result of being recommended by my high school band director for the American Music Abroad group. The group had taken kids from the surrounding area’s high schools to play traditional pieces for small audiences in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, and France. It sounds prestigious, but we were mostly just a colorful group of goof-offs. Tyler was no exception. I remember him most clearly when we were up in the Swiss Alps, the actual mountains, we were brought on via cable lift. He stood in his black Strokes t-shirt, and blue skater shorts, with his aviator sunglasses, and noticeably large belt buckle. What I loved most were his brown, full curls that messily rested on his head. He was playing the part of the slightly overweight jokester, taking off of his shirt, ice on the ground and all, and rubbing snow on himself. And as he did that, a man I assumed to be Swiss or possibly German, crept out of the cable car station and balled up some of the snow. He saw me looking at him and put a finger up to his mouth, as he snuck closer with his snowball to get a better shot at this strange, half-naked American kid. He threw it, Tyler jumped, and we all laughed, foreign man included. Laughter is apparently an international language. 
          I remember also, feeling so lonely and homesick on the bus ride from Frankfurt's airport to our hotel, that he made conversation with me about "good music," or what he considered to be good. When I seemed too withdrawn to want to talk, he let me borrow his cd player, and let me drown in the songs as I stared out the window at the greenest hills I'd ever seen.
          And here I am, in this kid’s car, giggling at nothing, save the waves of heat that come over my face like embarrassment, except that it felt like something purer than that, it felt honest. I’m embarrassed by honesty. I reached out every now and again to scruffle his dense facial hair with my fingertips, not a full grown beard, but a nice layer that extended past muttons, all the way down to the top of his neck.

            As the songs bled one into another, the striking “Nothing Gets Crossed Out” began, and in that moment it paralyzed the static of any immediate thoughts, save those evoked by these lyrics:

Well the future’s got me worried such awful thoughts/ My head’s a carousel of pictures the spinning never stops/I just want someone to walk in front, and I’ll follow the leader./I’m trying to be assertive, I’m making plans/want to rise to the occasion/ yeah, meet all their demands/but all I do is just lay in bed/and hide under the covers./And it’s too hard to focus through all this doubt/keep making these to-do lists but nothing gets crossed out/…But now I’ve got to crawl to get anywhere at all/I’m not as strong as I thought.

            That is the one song that can describe perfectly the sadness I’ve been feeling, explaining in those carefully crafted verses how I’ve felt so road blocked on I-Alone. A tear slipped to the ledge of my eye, slowly creeping down the lattice work of my lashes. I felt like I was looking into a mirror when our eyes met, the way you’d take a good, hard scrutinizing look at yourself, but instead of feeling disappointed, I felt relieved. I felt like I finally knew what I was looking at, and that someone else knew everything I felt, just the same.

            That album ended too soon, and Dashboard Confessional’s The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most replaced it.  From either the early April cold that found its way inside his car, or the tectonic plates of anxiety and excitement colliding inside of me, my body shook enough to aid in my impulse of doing what I had thought about doing earlier in the night, and earlier at the height of my overly romantic hopes--I went in for the kiss. Our lips were dry, but not rough, our cigarette stale breath in mutual agreement.  I forget what song was playing, but it doesn’t really matter now, because the vow of restraint I had made to myself not to slide into anything head first, was broken within the week I made it. And there I was sliding recklessly into the relationship bases, with no “go ahead” motion of my base coach conscience. Honestly I didn’t even notice him miming to me to “stop” where I was. And somehow, four albums worth of songs weren’t enough to narrate the moment, as it extended past the ending track and into the vast silence of early morning.

            It’s around 2:30. I think. I began to doze off a little as he ran his warm hand through my hair and around my ear, cupping my face as he thumbed at my cheekbones. Around 3, the comfort I was feeling was enough to cause my eyes to droop asleep and then flicker abruptly awake in cyclic sleepy fashion. I was evidently tired. I could have slept in that parking lot, in his car, by his side.

            Tyler seems so much more considerate than I was expecting. From what I‘d known of him in Europe, I‘d expected him to be the comic asshole, making jokes at my expense, but I got someone with more depth, someone sweeter, and it surprised me. “I guess you should probably figure out how to break up with your boyfriend.” he said, readdressing a concern I had made immediate to him earlier in the night. I laughed and said “I’ll do it tomorrow,” hoping that I could carry the strength I felt in this moment over into the morning so that I could do what I’ve been tip-toeing around for a little while now, and actually break up with my boyfriend. A boyfriend I have had for four years, since before I even left for Europe, but who had eroded the person I was a little more with each day we were together.

            He also said something to the effect of “You can take this at whatever pace you need to.”  He knew I was hesitant to let myself to slide so easily into another relationship. I’d been in one seemingly continuous one for six years, from one boyfriend to another. A serious relationship right now is not something I can necessarily handle, but nonetheless it seems like that’s exactly what I’m headed for. Relationship. Relationship. Relationship. I hate that word. It sounds so superficial. Maybe if we just don’t name it, if we live in these moments with nothing to define what they mean, they’d mean so much more in their namelessness.

            He noticed the gravid weight of sleep resting on my eyelids, and suggested it was about time we head off to our respective homes. I stubbornly refused, but knew it was probably for the best--I was incredibly ready to feel my pillow beneath my head. We stepped out of the car, and stood for a moment in that awkward transition of having to say goodbye, but not really wanting to. “So, you’ll see me on Sunday. And I’ll definitely talk to you before then.” he said. I don’t remember what I could have said. It must have been a minimal “yeah” or nod of the head, but then we hugged, and I got into my car to drive back to my dorm.

            I’ll be seeing him at his band’s show on Sunday, and then off to a crummy diner that needn’t be more than what it is, just as long as it offers that familiar environment that seems to foster camaraderie.

            I couldn’t stop myself from writing this as soon as I got back to my room, in a mad dash to remember absolutely everything in the most poetic way possible. Time has extended far past the hours that I should be asleep, but what’s the importance of sleep compared to moments like these? The need to transcribe the vibrations of my heart far outweighs the need to be refreshed for tomorrow’s classes.

This is what life is about.

Banditry

     “How’re you makin’ out over there, Gil?”

            I extended my hand behind the older woman who was expending some of her well-deserved retirement money, quarter by quarter, and who had not-so-strategically placed herself in the seat between Gilly and me. I gestured to Gilly in hopes that if he didn’t hear me in the madding din of the casino, that at least he’d notice there was a hand coming toward him and that someone wanted his attention.

       “Yeah, Andy, what is it?”

            He looked over, a little irritated, with his lips pursed and pushing themselves against his low ball glass of bourbon, ice tinkling with the tilt of his wrist. Everything on him was thick--lips, gut, fingers, neck, and even the bags of sleeplessness that dragged down towards his cheeks. He was at least a week unshaven, which was usual. He shaved about as often as an Amish kid bathed. He saved the task for some holy day near the end of the week. But this was our holy day, given all the jobs we’d done over the past two years, and instead of looking like he was enjoying the fruits of all our criminal labor (our business is really just a more profitable form of organ donation) he looked beaten down, and distracted. Our holy day in Vegas and here he is sulking. He really knew how to put a damper on what was supposed to be a good time. A wet fucking blanket.

       “Just wanted to know if you were getting lucky over there, is all.”

       “Nah, but this one should pay out soon, I think.”

            He grumbled. What the fuck did he have to grumble about? We’re in Vegas, baby, Vegas! And I wasn’t about to let him ruin my time here. I specifically dressed for this occasion, slicked back hair, snazzy pinstripe pants, black tank, matching fedora and all. It was a throw-back to a different era, crime bosses and gangsters of the twenties, but it seemed just as appropriate now considering where I was both in place and profession. I took back up with my dirty martini and slot machine.

            Funny he should be sitting behind one of these golden, one-armed bandits, considering the bar fight he got into a few days ago left his left arm broken and with only an operable right one. The fight precipitated when Gil got a little toasted and kept making some tactless advances on a lanky, freckled red-head at the angled edge of the bar.

***

            Gilly put his foot to the peddle and sped us away from our last hospital job in the podunk one road town of Cartha, Kansas, and from there we delivered the cooler of stolen livers and kidneys to a middle man not too far down the road, in exchange for a leather briefcase brimming with fat cash from our buyer. Eighteen hours later we arrived in Bullhead City, on the edge of Arizona and Nevada. This city was like a little starter Vegas, all lit up in violent reds and sleepy ambers on the Colorado Riverfront. And here we came upon Lucky’s, a wooden Alamo-esque building in its shape and a saloon plaque, coyly inviting us in. It looked like an appropriately substandard and promising hide out, boards almost imploding into the narrow alley behind it. It was a fitting place we could relax in and take advantage of for a few hours, before heading to our ultimate destination--Vegas. 

            We stepped into the vaccuum that Lucky’s created, a black hole on the other side of the boardwalk universe outside, pressing heavily upon its dilapidated structure. It was ill lit, as expected, and needless to say a total dive. It was perfect.

            Half the occupants of the small room consisted of Gil and me, the other half being the bartender and an older barfly in an aqua camisole, jean capris, complete with a golden anklet and black flip flops.

       “Whaddyu guys want?”

            The man behind the bar was portly, somewhat muscular, nearly bald save the slight ring of graying hair that wreathed his head from the top of one ear to the other. He was covered in an overwhelming glaze of grease, like that of a donut, and wearing a dirty black t-shirt. He looked like he should have been a bouncer instead of a bartender. In a place like this, though, I’m sure he doubled as one.

       “A bourbon on the rocks.”

            Gilly didn’t hesitate. He took a seat on one of the hard wooden stools, (they were spray painted a matte black color), and lit a cigarette.

       “An’ you?”

       “Vodka tonic.”

       “You got a preference?”

       “Absolut.”

       “Alright, then.”

            He grabbed a couple of low ball glasses and, like a claw machine in the foyer of a diner, dropped a handful in each glass. I turned to my right to face Gil, who kept facing straight forward.

       “Can I get a drag of that?”

       “Get your own fuckin’ pack. I only have like two left ‘til we get to Vegas.”

            The bartender placed our drinks on the bar, I nodded my thanks to him, but turned back to Gilly.

       “Aww, come on!”

       “Nah, laws of cig conservation. You get low, you don’t give ‘em out. It’s the rules.”

            The woman at the end of the bar slid a pack of Marlboro Lights down toward me. She smiled at me and Gilly. She had a nasty overbite, but flawlessly and no doubt professionally whitened teeth.  It seemed like such a waste on a woman like that. I took one out and slid them back down to her, putting my hand up and nodding my thanks. This act of generosity on her part, caught Gilly’s eye. And in his gaze, he caught hers. His drink was already gone and he was asking for a second.

            Every time the bartender turned his back to tend to tasks behind the bar, Gilly would make eyes with this woman, and she would try to sexily squint hers at him, but missed the mark of sexiness completely. She looked more like she had a nervous tick. Her hair was carnelian in color, and it would have been beautiful had it been lustrous, but in fact, it looked as though it had been overexposed to the heat of a blow dryer. Gil’s taste level in women is seriously questionable, at least it would be, if he were me.

            The bartender went through a pair of hinged doors to the back room. I took this time to survey the area around the bar. It was nothing much but a bunch of wooden panels with a thinning layer of glossy varnish, revealing its matte dullness in spots. A couple of buzzing neon beer signs, the “r-s” missing at the end of Coors, but Bud Light was still intact. There was a mess of dirty, water-spotted glasses near the sink, and on the wall across from it was a newspaper clipping. The bolded headline read “Local Man’s Parts Go Missing.” I became a little uneasy, only a little, because there was no way this big greasy bartender could have known that that was our job, probably about a month ago.  Maybe we were in Ohio, or the one before that in North Carolina. North Carolina. We should have stayed there a little while longer before heading out, it was nice while we were there, and plenty of opportunity to hit up a beach for the day before making our liver steal. I guess that could have been his cousin, or brother, but he was dead anyway so why would it even matter now. He kept the clipping though, so it must’ve mattered to tender Glazed-in-Grease back there. My attention found its way back to Gilly, who was wasting absolutely no time with this less-than-charming barfly.

       “Come on over here honey.”

            And lo and behold, she sauntered over, swaying a little from the Sea Breeze that pushed her in Gilly’s direction. I couldn’t really say anything. Who am I to get in the way of a man and his prospects? I wouldn’t keep him from getting what he wanted, so I played oblivious, turned a blind eye, but watched peripherally. He looked up at her, locking his eyes on hers, and pulled her closer to him by means of a crooked arm, hand on her ass.

       “Hey!”

            She quietly objected to his hands being on her. It’s like a drunk to want something one moment, and to change their mind once reality flashes in front of them for a split second.

       “Yeah? Big Red, I got something for you.”

            He took her unmanicured hand and placed it in his lap. This didn’t look like it was going to end well. I felt disaster slowly, but surely coming on. She looked surprised, in a hazy, confused, drunk way. By this time the tender was just coming back through the doors.

     “I’ve got a tongue you wouldn’t believe and I got a craving for something hot and cinnamon sweet, Red.”

            The bartender heard this, and immediately started furiously toward Gilly, his eyes bulging and ablaze, like light bulbs whose glass expands with the heat of their output.

       “What…the FUCK?!

            He had both hands pushed hard against the bar. His fingers curled and clenched so hard that his knuckles turned white. Red the Barfly backed away, nearly in tears.

       “What’s it to you?” Gil grumbled.

       “That’s my wife, you dirty fuck.”

       “Well, what can I say? It looked like she needed it.” Gil snarled in an unaffected tone.

            Immediately, the tender grabbed the arm that Gilly had previously wrapped around Red, and pulled it across the bar. He had such a grip that Gilly couldn’t pull away from him, and finally Gil looked nervous. I didn’t know what exactly I should do, but I just sat, wide eyed, and watched Gilly take what he had coming to him. Making tasteless advances on a stranger was his action, and having the bartender yank, bend, and break his elbow over the bar was his consequence. However, I also had to endure hearing the crack and split of his bones, which was my consequence for being affiliated with a person so tactless. Gilly’s scream pierced the hollow atmosphere of the room. The bartender still had a hold on his arm, and while Gilly grunted and moaned, he leaned in towards Gil’s sweat-beaded face and whispered something. Gilly’s eyes got wide, and I knew whatever the tender had said, it was good and terrifying. The bartender let go of Gilly’s disconnected bones.

       “Now get the fuck outta my bar. The both of you.”

            Gilly scampered out the door. It was the quickest I’d ever seen him move. I quickly took the last glug of my drink, and followed hurriedly behind.

       “You’d better hope I don’t find you again! Don’t think I don’t know who you shits are!” he called after us. “Sleep Well!” and he laughed.

And that was that.

***

            I had headed to bed not soon after I had tried to question Gilly about his anxious, but zombie-like disposition. By “headed to bed,” I mean that I drunkenly stumbled up to our assigned room, and finally found it after trying the card key in two other rooms on the same floor. I passed out on the bed, face down and still clothed. When I woke up, Gilly still wasn’t anywhere in the room. I found some aspirin and water and took it with me as I headed downstairs again. I wandered outside hoping to catch some fresh, cool air, but all I caught was the nasty smoggy humidity of the city. I walked over to the nearest shaded alley, hoping to evade the heat of the sun and put my forehead against the cool brick, but it was only a slight relief. The sickening smell of garbage beat at my nose and gag reflex, and I opened my eyes to see smears of reds and greens that looked as disgusting as it smelled. I decided the air conditioning in the casino was of a better quality, seeing as how the heavy air outside seemed to intensify my headache.

            Where the fuck was he?

            I then remembered where we had sat yesterday and began to look down the rows of machines. Maybe that fat bastard passed out pulling the machine’s arm, still holding the hand of luck in his dreams.

            I found the row we were in yesterday, and he was still there. He still averted his eyes and kept his gaze on what could be the glorious fruition of the randomly generated, rolling pictures. It wasn’t the idea of winning a jackpot that hooked him--we had enough money--but the idea of winning itself, of being lucky, kept him there, I suppose.            

       “You’ve been down here all night? What’s your Goddamned problem, Gil?”

        “Ah ott ohh hung.”

            He was always grumbling! Damn it! Could he just give me one coherent and crisp fucking sentence?!

        “What?”

            I would’ve jerked his shoulder so he faced me, but the shoulder closest to me was the one attached to his broken arm, so I refrained, yet craned my head so he might turn his.

       “What the fuck’s wrong with you?!” He paused for a moment, staring blankly ahead at the machine in front of him. I just looked at the mess around where he was sitting. Puddles of thick, sticky, coagulated ketchup were splattered and smeared on the floor around his chair, unfinished and spoiled shrimp cocktail that had been there since the night before, and a cherry fucking slushie with what looked like little chunks of chopped, but unchewed and dyed deep pink shrimp. Or chicken. Or a thick meat of some sort.

       “Well?” And at that he turned his head slowly toward me, retaining an expression of dull shock behind his eyes. His face was painted even more heavily with shadows than it was yesterday. The chapped, flaking skin on his lips was stained, and as he began to part them, I hovered closer to his face, squinting to see what he was about to show me--a chip of ice and a wet pit of glistening clear spit, mixing with the red-purple of blood, against the soft cushion of pink, where his tongue should have been.

Polka Dots Herald the World's End

       I held her close to me at the airport drop-off, clinging violently like industrial strength Velcro, hoping that one of my rough plastic hooks could snag itself on her frayed edges. She said she had had enough, that I just didn’t understand her or where she was coming from. I don’t really understand why she’s leaving, so I guess she’s right. I told her she was a fireball--bright and unyielding--she was flattered, but called me an extinguisher, a placid lake to her restless conflagration. She said something about wanting to trek to California before she met me, that she had always wanted to, but didn’t--until now. Until this very moment, in which I can feel her love being pried away by the sunshine and sixty degree weather, faux beach spirituality and ninety-nine cent Buddhas. She took her guitar. The same guitar she played to tell me she loved me by covering other band’s ballads. Years ago she had broadcast herself in front of her peers at her high school’s coffee house, but looked only at me. Now her gaze is set on boardwalks and piers, hoping that  passers-by might throw some cash into her guitar case.

            She threw a sad look at me, but still bright with hope of an ideal future. She threw her arms about me tightly, squeezing and inhaling deeply the only impediment left before she could answer her “what-ifs.” She said that if she didn’t find out now what she was capable of, what she was missing, that she’d waste her life miserably, throwing worries and doubts around like massive medicine balls that would crash through the ceiling of her mind, only to drop their heavy weights into her eyes. Sometimes I wish that when she spoke, she actually made sense. She’s got everything she needs right here, an affirmation of all she could do in her life lies in a single “I love you,” but no, here and now, in this airport, she’s letting her arms fall about me, her hands lingering around mine--I can hear the harsh tear of the Velcro, her detachment from me synchronous with the ripping of my heart--like a sheet of paper torn, each half carelessly thrown aside like a middle-schooler’s assignment on a Friday. She tore herself away, and disappeared down the corridor.

Commence program auto-pilot.

            I drove home, willfully vacant. You never understand how difficult it is to really clear your mind, to stop your thoughts, until it’s absolutely necessary for your survival. I managed my way back to the apartment, without having thought too much about anything. I  put the key in the lock and jarred the door open with a kick at the bottom corner, because it sticks. I threw the keys down on the kitchen counter, and Christ, here it comes again, I can feel it welling up in me, a deluge of thought brought on by everything that reminded me of her in the apartment. The emptiness of it and the reverberations of my own actions within, painfully remind me that I’m the only one here now.

Bob Dylan and Jack Kerouac are bad influences on your girlfriends.

             I’d stopped the rolling stone briefly, for a few years, but she started to gather moss and I don’t think she liked feeling so aged. I was a wooden, splintered wedge against a fireball, she consumed me, and rolled on. I bet she hadn’t thought ahead of time how fire burns itself out in the California sands, like a cigarette, snuffed. She’ll eventually find herself cool and indifferent in the presence of the same things that seemed to excite her. The thought of her happy, and without me, seems impossible.

At least I know it’s impossible in the reverse. Shit. I hate how much she really gets to me.

            I didn’t understand this. I could give her anything she wanted. As much as I loved her, I can’t help but hate her. Why would she leave me? Why would she be so selfish, how could there be anything else that she absolutely needed? Christ, to go so far away from me, and for what? A beach full of sleazy Sal Paradise figures and warmer weather? And what was so wrong with me that I wasn’t enough? How dare she! I can imagine her, in some coffee shop, these oh-so-postmodern hipsters all around, filling her with false promises of finding some sort of ideological “peace.” Why can’t she understand that that “peace” doesn’t exist, that anywhere one goes is a new obstacle awaiting. Conflict is the height of the human experience, and to avoid it like this, to deny that it even exists and to steal off to San Francisco, Monterey, Salinas, LA, or wherever her whimsy takes her, is just preposterous. She’ll be back when the loneliness gets too much for her. The social anxiety she’s had for years will eat her alive in the crowd of an unfamiliar population, and she’ll be back, and I’ll still be bitter. I’d welcome her back, but as she hugs me, my face will contort in such disdain at the thought of having been chosen second. I can only imagine what beguiling jerk will take advantage of her sweet naiveté, and lie his way into her heart for a night, just to win a spot in her bed, and then be gone by morning. He can’t make her toes curl like I do, that’s for damn sure. God, he better not. Fuck her if she lets him! Christ, how do I handle every intricate imaginary scenario that enters my head at every second of every hour?

The phone startled me out of my string of thoughts, and I eagerly lunged to greet who I hoped was her, even though at the same time, I would really loathe hearing her voice.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Lenton? How’s your DSL provider working for you today? Well, I wanted to let you know about Stramgard’s Cable Service that boasts…”

Click.

Damn.

            I went back about the kitchen, surveying the colorful assortment of coffee cups awaiting a wash. The cups are as individually identifiable as people of different nationalities in a crowd: an earthy brown clay cup, kiln-fired, with a light blue glaze; a Starbucks logo against a plain white enamel; an antique-looking dark brown and khaki swirled cup from Ocean City, Jersey that seemed to resemble a honey pot in its round shape; a pink one with green polka dots; one with yellow, pink, and green pastel stripes; another brown clay coffee mug, taller than the rest and with a noticeable heft to it, with various artsy portraits of women and an art deco feel, using only shades of brown, blue, and the slightest hints of pink; a pink mug with brown polka dots. She really loved polka dots, whatever chance she got to decorate something in the apartment, it was usually laden with polka dots. She made our curtains out of fabric she found in a craft store. She sewed and stuffed her own pillows, made her own wrap-around skirts. You give her a project, she could probably execute it on the first or second try with the skill of someone who’s been at it for a while. It was either polka dots, or reprints of pre-Raphaelite art that was meant for a dorm room, but then placed in a carefully selected frame. There’s John Everett Millais’ “Ophelia” in the living room, propped up against the wall, behind a glass frame (she hadn’t found a frame border that seemed to match the mood yet); John William Waterhouse’s “The Lady of Shallot” in an aged, dull, gold frame that stares out from a wall opposite a window in the laundry room; and a taste of the Art Nouveau style of Alphonse Mucha’s “Four Seasons” in a cherry wooden frame on our bedroom wall. I guess it’s not so much ours now as it is mine. My bedroom. I’m alone.

            My laments of the accents of the apartment, just made me feel like she was more gone than ever. The walls of the apartment were decorated with her undeniable presence, just as sure as my heart was decorated with memories of her, and there was no corner of it to which I could turn where some ghostly thought of her didn’t linger. My heart, I’m sure, was now polka dotted. Damn it.

            The phone again bounced its sonorous call across the room. I sauntered over to answer, no longer expectant, and pretty indifferent to whatever telemarketer soliciting my business in their rhythmic, rehearsed, robotic hum.

“Hello?”

Click. They hung up.

Ugh, I just want to go somewhere where I don’t think of her. I need to go blank for a little while. Fuck the dishes, fuck the phone, fuck her art, and her polka dots. I’m going to bed.

*****

6:55 AM and the alarm on the night stand goes off. I hit the snooze button hard, like it deserves it.

            I could feel the weight of her ghost limbs beside me in bed, the tickle of her earthy spider silk hair at my nose, as I inch closer to try to reach an arm over her--this time I succeed in only keeping the heavy air of where she once laid under my bed embrace. The crisp sheets seem to taunt me with their lively green stripes against the empty white space in between. Those stripes would have outlined her silhouette, she on her side, the peak of her hip having the highest altitude on her topography, and right next to the lowest dip--a valley of a waist. Her side of the bed was cold to the touch.

            What kills me the most is that it’s a Monday morning and I have to be at work in an hour. Nothing around me seems to have changed, and yet, there’s this tremendous event that’s shaken everything inside of me. I expected the world to end, but, what’s more torturous, is that it’s stayed just the same.

Michael (tentative)

This draft will probably be a little more than rough, but even the most polished and perfect prose wouldn’t be good enough for you.

You’ll have a story about you yet. You will. And once it’s finished, maybe one morning when I’ve spent the night and when you leave for work, I’ll place it on your pillow for you to read the same way you’ve left notes for me on the nightstand under my phone for me to wake up to once you’ve left.

I have trouble pin-pointing exactly why I’m so enamored of you. It could be the confliction I feel because of your lack of ambition, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A man without overzealous ambition lives simply, and simply enjoys living every day. And I believe in that simple life, not overcomplicated with anxieties and hopes for the future. I want to believe in that relaxed living so much, because I live in a world of anxieties. I’d be willing to try taking a different attitude towards life, other than the one I have.

Where and how you live leads me to believe in such a beautiful simplicity, in a little lofty cottage poking out of the ground, surrounded by woods, the boundaries of a horse farm, and hills fielded with bright buttercups that remind me of the opening credits to Little House on the Prairie. Your house is also bordered by the Brandywine river on which we capriciously went tubing last Sunday on a stiflingly humid 85 degree day in May. Your roommate and grade-school friend, Paul, and a few of your friends all piled into your car with our blown up (mistakenly so, as it was hard to fit them all in the car with us) $4 intertubes resembling tires from Wal-mart. You sped down dirt and gravel roads, the greenery whipping past us, your friend Alex leaning out of the frame, sitting inthe negative space of the window. The aroma of Yuengling lager from our open bottles and sounds of Creedance Clearwater Revival permeated the air. And I felt as though I were in the 60’s, a time I know you appreciate as much as I do, all denim and American life. Getting smoked out and not worried about a goddamn thing.

Your drinking habits are questionable like Kerouac’s. You enjoy lazy afternoons and sometimes I watch you shoot .22’s off of your back porch down the hill at some blue canister hanging from the tree line. I don’t like the loud noise of the gun, but at least I’m not surprised by it. If I know it’s coming, it isn’t as startling. I enjoy you enjoying lazy afternoons, and make myself lazy for you. It feels good to be relieved of all that ambition a few days out of the week, to forget that I’m too hard on myself when there’s no good reason for it.

You’re a question mark. You tell me nothing of how you feel for me, and when I doubt whether you want to be with me as much as I want to be with you, you tell me: “You don’t know what I want, Erin.” And that drives me crazy, because you leave it at that, and I’m still left wondering. It makes me think that you’re holding out on some master plan, though I know you don’t think that far ahead into the future, so I guess you’re just hinging on the ‘now,’ on the amorphous nature of this type of thing, of just letting things play out as they will. I believe that in not giving me an answer to your question mark, that you’re possibly saving this from an end. Because an answer would materialize this relationship, and these things, once defined, end sooner or later.

I almost asked you last night after we made love, with your body still between my legs and resting your messy head at my heart: “What do you feel when you’re with me?” But I couldn’t bring myself to do that. Half because I was afraid of the answer ruining the night, and half afraid that I was once again begging for definition. The intimacy between you and I is something to be recognized. I don’t care what we do all day when we hang out, and it seems like we’re struggling for things to say, but once we get to bed all those other things are peripheral. Communication between us is a mystery in every way but that. Our bodies speak in movements that play to certain disabilities, like Braille for the blind, and effectively we understand each other. At least I feel it. You still don’t let me know, but I doubt less and less the more we sweat and sigh. Your care with me is the proof. A hand behind my head, a tight embrace that keeps me near to you, the firmness with which your hands move me, the punctuation of your moans. It’s the passion with which you keep me satisfied, pressing your mouth and tongue to all the places on me you adore. At least I hope it’s adoration. And genuine affection. Once again, I never know. You never tell me. Not with words, anyway.

I might’ve made this all up in my own head. Once again, I never know. This might not be real. You’d never tell me.

***

A couple of Saturdays later, you threw a party. I pulled up to see two girls in party dresses coming from your front door, to what I’m assuming was their car. Seeing them walk from your house like that made me feel strange, as if they were taking the ‘walk of shame’ the morning after. We passed each other, at an enormous distance. I walked through the grass as the automatic flood light kicked on, and down the brick walkway to your front door. I let myself in, at this point I was comfortable enough to be beyond

knocking. I walked into a bunch of boys lounging on the couch and around your little living room, only two of which I knew, Alex, and your brother. Out on the deck you had a beer pong table set up, red party cups on a white fold-out plastic table, with the height of the deck so unfortunate that if a ball rolled off of it, it required a good seven foot jump down to retrieve.

Your ex-girlfriend and an acquaintance of mine from high school called you for directions to your hidden little house. You didn’t warn me that she’d be coming. You hadn’t thought about it. Immediately my mind frenzied and my heart dropped. I feel so very attached to you, and it disheartens me to think that any wedge is between us, and I already know you seem to require more space than most, so there’s already an understood emotional separation between us. This is the one girl you admittedly cared the most about, and that same attention and care is something that I’m struggling to eek out of you. I was smoldering on the inside, so much so that despite my admitted inability to make friends with girls, I befriended one of the girls I’d seen visiting the car earlier, just so I could talk a little trash about your carelessness to make myself feel better. I felt intimidated. I was reduced to cattiness. I know I have no hold on you.

She showed up, and with a boyfriend. That was the one thing I felt might ameliorate the situation, if only in the slightest. If she had shown up with a girlfriend, newly out of the closet, hell, that probably would have made me feel even better. She came in from the deck with a plate of brownies and I thought to myself: I didn’t bring anything special to this party. I bet she made a better impression on everyone else than I had. I hadn’t made you baked goods yet. It was the first thing my friend Hilary had told me to do for you to let you know I liked you, and hadn’t done it yet. Shit, she beat me to it.

My brain reeled on with so many scenarios of what I could do better, or what I needed to do to get your attention. As she came in with the plate, her eyes met mine and I loosened the tension in my facial muscles enough to let out a chipper “Hi!” from the couch. I feign being okay so well. I quickly went back to stewing and let out a few bitter remarks to the hairdresser girl sitting next to me. That ’hi’ is all we’d exchanged with each other the entire night. I didn’t eat any of her fucking brownies, strictly out of protest.

Her boyfriend meandered around a little bit, looking quite out of place. And as she wasn’t tethered to his hip or anything, she naturally found herself mingling with others she’d known before I had. You guys started talking. You smiled and laughed and carried on like old friends, reacquainted. She was familiar with you in the way that I wanted to be. I didn’t make myself too present. I tried hard not to bother you, not to make any kind of scene, save the brushing of my fingertips at your hip in front of her as I passed through the kitchen to get myself another drink. Trust me, at this point if I didn’t have a drink in my hand, I was on my way for another one. The hours reeled on: Jeffrey. Pomegranate juice cocktail. Tequila. Drinkin outta cups like bitches! Bob Marley. Kevin. Mushrooms. Bowls. Glass. Metal. Who’s got a light? Grilling. Hot dogs. Hamburgers. Messy ketchup cap. Shitty beer in a cooler. Better beer in the fridge. She left.

I didn’t notice when she’d said goodbye, but after she’d left and by nearly the end of the night, you were closer to me. You actually put your arm around my waist. You apologized for being such a rotten boy to me. I must’ve pointed some questions toward you regarding once again our lack of definition and my complete and utter ignorance when it came to how you felt about me, because you turned me to face you, and said something to the effect of: “This really is all you’re waiting for?” I looked you dead in the eye and nodded enthusiastically, anticipating a response. Oh, please just say something. You didn’t. You just hinted that I’d have to wait. That it would come out, just not tonight. I’m not a patient person by any means, but goddammit, I will wait.

Around 3 a.m. we went to bed, and your leftover friends lay strewn about your living room in various stages of passing out.

The next day I felt lazy, and lounged around most of the morning in your bed in a tee shirt and short 80’s style track shorts (my pajama attire, the only other clothes I had with me since you’d spilled a glass of water on your floor--where my clothes from yesterday were). By noon you were already drunk on Jameson, Jim Beam, and shitty Natty Ice, still chilled and leftover from last night. Questionable drinking habits-- like Kerouac--I’ll say it again. I didn’t think again about last night’s cliffhanger, the day was proceeding typically, like any lazy Sunday after a late night Saturday. You turned the corner from the kitchen to the little nook that is “your room” to find me curled up in your blue cotton sheets. You stood there for a second. “You know, I like you more than I let on.” came out of your mouth. So abrupt. So unexpected. So perfect. You took a sip from your whiskey on the rocks, turned, and walked back through the kitchen to resume your mingling with last night’s leftover friends who were still hanging around. TRUIMPH! I wanted to squeal. I held it together but felt much brighter behind the eyes. 

***

You might be here to teach me patience, I think. To show me that not everyone works the way that I do. That there are ways to just loosen up and stop worrying. To take it slowly and feel it for real. Though I’m afraid. I’m afraid that you might just be using your explanation of slow relationship development as a front because you don’t feel the way I feel about you. That it isn’t as intense for you. Speaking from experience, I know those things don’t typically just develop over time if it wasn‘t there in the first place. Part of me is skeptical. You could just be dragging me along, afraid to admit you don’t feel the same way. But I think I’ll trust you . Why? I don’t know. My hope is so infinite, even in the most hopeless of situations.

One of your friends even let me know how hopeless my relationship with you is-- he saw the way I looked at you at the party and the way I took your hands when I visited you guys at work. He felt the need to warn me that you’re a charmer and can easily get me to do what you want (which is true), but that there’s no charming a charmer. No matter how much I do for you, I can’t win. I was playing a losing game from the start. The sad thing is, is that I think I’ve been aware of that the whole time.

But there’s something inside me that leads me to think that if I just wait it out, something inside you will click, and some sort of epiphany will ensue. There are things you’ve said to me, mixed as your signals are, that lead me to believe that. As sparse as our serious conversation is, when it happens, I feel so much closer to you. Even though you gloss over all the details, like that of your relationship (or lack thereof) with your father or why there’s such a disparity between you and your degenerate brother, or anything of consequence of your family history; I’ll take what I can get. I want to know so much about you and where you came from, but you play dumb, like you have a fine life, like nothing has ever really affected you. This attitude of yours worries, yet intrigues me. I attribute your drinking tendencies to these things you won’t talk about. Though I don’t know. You’d never tell me.

To be so oblivious to my feelings (like being unaware that I might want a caring visitor when I came down with a kidney infection that left me feverish and absent from work for a few days), you are surprisingly intuitive at the most random times. You called me out on certain things a couple of days ago when we last talked. That my sad stories of past disappointment are a device for pity. You’re half right. The realization of my divisive behavior hit me hard in the gut, but I realize also that I just want someone to understand me. You realized I haven’t many friends. You realized how lonely I am. It sounds pathetic. I sound desperate, but let me explain.

It’s not a kind of desperation where I need just anyone. It’s a sadness in knowing that feeling what I feel for you is so uncommon that I know it’ll be a challenge to find someone whose presence immediately stops me where I stand again. It’s a quiet loneliness that I have inside myself, a longing for empathy, a longing for you know me, to love me for where I’ve been, who I am, and who I’ll be, a longing to be understood on a deeper human level. It’s a longing for a true best friend. When I make long lasting bonds, they’re perfect, but true relationships like that are the most endangered of things. It’s something I can’t explain better than that.

I also realize I have an unfortunate fascination with being an underdog, being the exception to the rule and beating horrible odds; however, the odds are usually 99.9 per cent out of my favor and I’m left still stupidly struggling against them. I’ll keep pretending that anything is possible, even when I’m shown proof to the contrary. I’m a generally smart person in every way--but this. I’m clinging tightly to absolutely nothing, but this hope is nothing I can rationally explain, nothing that’s cerebral. My love for you is something visceral that has materialized and has dissipated into something haunting, an apparition of what I thought I saw, a quickly dissolving moment in time. It’s something that seemed real in my periphery, but with a closer look I realize nothing’s there. If you ever made yourself present again, I’d hope to see it dead on, real and standing in front of me.

***

You know I’m leaving soon for graduate school. That in a few short months I’ll be heading out on that train to California. I’m not holding my breath. I’m not expecting that much progress from you. Despite whatever ebb and flow of our closeness and distance, I still care. I still feel what I feel, but you’ve a lot to learn about consideration--a lot to learn about me. But know that even with the lack of progress, come the day I leave, it’ll only be right to tell you I love you, only because I’ve felt it all along. And you can leave it at that because I won’t expect you to say something you don’t mean. And, in my own way, I’ll take you with me. You’ll stay with me even if you aren’t. And I expect that you can either reassure me, or just let me get the hell out of this town. Either I’ll leave with your love, or I’ll just leave and start over.

I hope this is real, and I hope you’d finally tell me.

***

That was the faux ending. The ending I had hoped for. I really did make it all up in my head. “We’re friends who occasionally hook up.”

You finally told me.