Fall
Up
above a star shape blinks and tingles melodic, a candelabra on the edge of a
grand piano, swirls of light, paths of falling once-life-givers now downwards,
thick like a virus stuck to lungs and like the lungs the night breathes heavy
for their presence. All around more ground-like are stars too, these different
but not just for their electricity (incandescent and fluorescent and neon and
plasma and cathode ray and lcd), but for the fact of the arrangement of their
beauty, not the Pollockian randomizations of the cosmotic, but some man kind
design on the Sale, the Scam, the Freaks, the Geeks, the con-men and cheap
games and cheaper prizes, lit up brighter than life, pink and green teddy bears
the size of those who oggle them, asking their kin to buy into the con, for
them, and some the kin do, for the lights that come on in the kids eyes with
The Win. Sticky, smells like cotton candy chewing gum cheap perfume (prom queen
hanging off some small town football star), burbling smell-tinge popcorn and
funnel cake speckles the cool night air as it roasts away in machines the color
of expensive sport cars, sex, the cars far absent from Place Like Here. All
through the air too is the heckles, the carnie cries, screams of orgiastic
delight erupting in clusters from rides spinning up above the games but below
the stars, their lights blurring into confetti streamers.
Off
just to the boardwalk’s left, below a waist high fence made out of old wood,
scarred and pockmarked and slightly rotted and slightly green from brine and
sea air and the occasional dropping (falling hard and malevolent like snow on
the Coldest Night of a great Minnesota blizzard) of shit, deposited from up on
high by a disinterested seagull, lap hard with some great anger, sea waves,
calling out their first great cry from their last port of call, a million miles
from here, but likely by a scene much the same, lights and colours and energy
and love, mens’ deepest yearnings always called to with such passion by sea
air’s brine.
Then
down the boardwalk wanders one couple, and he’s not a football player and she’s
not a prom queen, but they hold each other closer together than those
illustrious (in small town’s small definition of the word) two, and they talk
and laugh and each peel of laughter from one alights a rosy glitter across the
other’s face, and the girl brushes a lock of too-long hair out of the boy’s
eye, and then they stop laughing and just look at each other, trying to fall
down into each others’ eyes, souls reflected within sharp-coloured face-saucers
(their souls or the souls they imagine in the one across from them or the two
grown no longer so mutually exclusive), and the boy gingerly plants a kiss on
the girl’s lips and she kisses him back.
Then
the boy tightens his grip around the girl’s slim waist (and she once again
pushes aside a lock of hair), and parts his lips, as if to speak some truth
contained deep within, but then he shuts them again as his words, though yet
unspoken, are interrupted, as Another steps into their Perfect Two, breaks the
shell that had, over the last stretch of forward motion, grown up around them
like an egg around an as yet unborn baby bird, and the voice of the Other
serves now to call them into his world.
He
speaks words carefully prepared and practiced to a million young lovers a
night, all so perfectly ensnared by one another that his intrusions are allowed
to worm their way in as a virus, to capture the minds and hearts and plant
Something New beyond their simple love.
The
two step up on the man’s small stage, borders harsh cut with stage lights,
blinding top down glare, all immediately outside their space’s heat belonging
to shadow, despite the miasmatic phosphorescence smeared as jam on bread across
the night sky all around, but the two can feel the faces on them, clustered as
the man speaks more, more calls into the night to gather round and see the
proof of trust, a physicalization of that old cry - “Put your money where your
mouth is!” And the simple notion that burrows itself hard and fast like a
bullet shot from a long rifle into chest, and remains there, sitting around and
just waiting for the right time to rear its ugly head, the man’s message - if
the boy here fails there is something deeply rotten in their love, proof that
something is broken like a piece old china.
But
it doesn’t mean anything, the boy thinks as he takes his place behind the girl,
she with arms crossed in front of her, eyes directed forwards, piercing beyond
the light and darkness, looking seemingly out over the ocean with all its
self-alleged infinity, darkness not just at the surface but down deep to its
very soul, creatures who never see in light, who never mate for life, who never
hold Trust like we hold Trust, and yet beyond the ocean some other Nation, it
with its own Trust and its own Trust with this one, and she hopes she can trust
like the boy said on that warm spring night with the Jack Daniels on some
back road in the woods, their young bodies lying naked against one another in
the back of her truck, perfect trust, forever trust.
And
then, like that, the girl begins to tip backwards, and as she crosses the point
of no return, time slows imperceptibly and it will never speed back up again
and before she started she was young and life was free and there was trust and
now she hears as time slows the breeze whistling slightly past her ears, air
pushing up on the back of her neck, the cries of the Watchers, sees above her
lights of some ride circling fast and people cry out from it, and she’s still
falling and though time is moving so slow as to count the electrons, she knows
she’s been falling too long and then she feels her back crack against the wood
of the stage and her breath go out of her, and all around her, now at ground
level, a few people scream, and the boy, all he can do is whisper oh fuck.
The
carnie barks out something again about trust and now suddenly the trust is
gone, so much staked on it for these past few months between those who were,
just seconds earlier the Two and are now just the two. It’s not falling out of
love, but it's the end of a kind of perfect love.
Later
that night the two sit again under bright lights, but these lights, rather than
a sea, a spot against the darkness, an old ice cream stand stuck at the end of
a crumbling precipice looking down onto waves crashing and roiling at sharp
rocks, the top of an unlit road leading up from the carnival, and under the
chemical light, the girl can see dried tears on the boys face, as his tongue lashes
out in short licks directed dispassionately at vanilla ice cream, and she tries
to say it’s okay, her sipping on a milkshake, lipstick smudged slightly, acne
showing through under makeup, the same seer of tears, and for each okay, the
boy seems to fade from her a little more, and she knows something irrecoverable
is gone.
Road
Old
Honda Nighthawk going a little too fast down lonely road under blanket of fog
halfway between two slices of nowhere, the deer popping up as if deposited by
fog itself, sliding into the turn, laying the bike flat, an awful screeching
noise, and then a burning pain in side, a tree, broken ribs, bike will be fine,
given repair, ribs too, question is getting both to a relevant doctor, given
current lack of locality.
The
motorcyclist, face young, eyes tired, sits back against the tree, holding his
side, trying to pull off his leathers, check for damage, hope for someone to
come along, call an ambulance. Or AAA, even. Just his luck his phone would
shatter when met with ground’s rising impact.
Though
it’s not but 5pm, early summer, with the fog all seems so dark, road unlit,
beyond the tree behind him, all is nought but white, a haze of possibility,
could be a house not more than two dozen yards away, could be nothing for two
dozen miles. Could be anything, really. He checks his watch, and slowly the
hands turn and yet the road remains abandoned, as if man straight up gave up on
this patch of earth. Through the fog he can’t even tell if he’s in farmland or
forest or those rolling plains of nothing he remembers from his childhood,
though he figures it's not that. Can’t hear the ocean here, so that’s
something. It’s not much, but it’s something, a suggestion of an identity.
Better phone. Should’ve gotten a better phone. Put it in a deeper pocket.
Something. Should’ve done something. Been in a few minor accidents before, even
broken ribs, though not on his bike, but then there was always someone to save
him. Out here though...
Then
from somewhere in the fog, down the road tracking black and double yellow
before being all consumed, comes a dull rumble, and the motorcyclist can’t help
but think of a line he read on a half-felled wall somewhere - “something wicked
this way comes.” He hopes he is wrong, and rather than wicked thus comes a
pretty girl in a Porsche, but this isn’t the place for it, not the night.
Black
van, paint chipping off, dent in the left rear fender, what appears to be duct
tape over a side panel. Within not a pretty girl, but a man, 40 something,
balding, white wifebeater, stained, overweight slightly, but strong looking,
big. Something wicked then, his fate for the night. As the van slows to a stop,
the brakes make a noise like a pig having its throat slit. Then the door opens.
“You
alright kid?”
“Laid
out the bike... think I broke some ribs.”
“Shit,
that’s some fucking luck. Out here. Nothin’ much out here. I’m only here
because I’m visiting an aunt... I’m a carnie, see, and we just happened to end
up in a little town near here.”
“You got a phone? Call an
ambulance?”
“No,
don’t do phones. Don’t like people much, you know? Don’t worry though. I’ll get
you to a hospital. Not real far. Twenty minutes, thirty.”
“I...”
“C’mon,
I got space for your bike in back.”
“It’s
pretty heavy, easily 450 pounds...”
“Hah.
I deadlift that before breakfast.” The motorcyclist wants to object, it’s
wrong, it feels wrong, warning signs, so many warning signs. And there’s no way
the carnie is lifting his bike. Carnie gets out, helps the motorcyclist into
the passenger seat, before unlocking the back of his van, opening the doors,
then going to the bike. He bends down and the motorcyclist watches, his eyes
more than a little worried. As the man stretches out his arms, muscles bend and
bulge like an old Popeye cartoon, and then his thigh muscles and glutes engage
like actuators on a machine arm, and as lifting nought but air, the man lifts
the bike, not just to two wheels but into the sky, supported just by his arms,
before setting it, with a care oft reserved for children, into van’s rear.
Doors slam shut.
Something
to this night’s air feels decidedly fatalist, and in the motorcyclist’s life,
such atmospheric portents had always seemed to come before something decidedly
Awful. With each breath inwards he takes, the motorcyclist thinks he catches
some smell new on the van, spilled booze, bourbon, judging by bottles rolling
about his feet, old cigarettes, then something sweet and rotten, turns slightly
and looks over his shoulder, into the back of the van, a few boxes, normal enough,
but what of that stain, its colour an indication of-
“So
kid, what brings you to this patch of scorched earth?”
“Heading
to the city.”
“Oh,
yeah? Why you going there?”
“Uh,
gotta see a friend. She uh...”
“Yeah?”
The motorcyclists regrets his noises towards a connection.
“Well,
something happened, she’s kind of shook up, and I haven’t seen her in a bit, so
I figured I’d go see how she’s doing, like, yeah.”
“She
a friend, or a, well a friend?” The intonation can’t easily be
described, placed on that second friend, but it’s meaning makes itself
known immediately to all within ear shot.
“Just
a friend. Old friend. Good friend.”
“She
pretty?”
“I
mean...” The motorcyclist is wary, something about the carnie doesn’t even
begin to sit right. “Like, she’s my friend, you know?”
“Don’t
give me none of that shit.” Maybe it’s not but maybe it is, maybe it’s gruff,
maybe that edge is anger, maybe it’s some speck of phlegm or bile caught up in
the throat. “She pretty or fucking not? Unless you’re gay, which case, I mean,
I ain’t judgin’ or nothin’, but, well, never got that whole thing... don’t
prevent me from helping you, mind, but. Well, as you said, you know.” And now
the motorcyclist knows it's there and knows something has just slipped in the
carnie’s voice. Something just slipped South and some affected culturability
has just made itself scarce.
“No,
I mean, uh, no, I’m not gay, not that, but, uh... I mean sure, she’s pretty
enough, I guess.”
“Then
why she just a, hah, a friend?”
“We
just don’t see each other that way.”
“Don’t
see each other that way... don’t see each other that way... now what kind of
horseshit is that? Jesus fuck, I got a hot woman wants to be my friend, I’ll be
her friend, but I’ll also do my damndest to be her friend, you get me?”
“It’s
just, it’s not...”
“Maybe
you fuckin’ are a gay. Don’t want to put it in your pretty friend? Fuckin’ shit
kid, you sure you not gay?” The voice is now raised and the motorcyclist’s eyes
linger on a patch of colour particularly ominous right below the man’s right
pectoral, spread like a virus across the slightly off-colour, wrong-smell wife
beater. The kid starts to cough, and his side starts hurting like he’s been
shot there. “Shit kid, you okay? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it, I was
just joking!” The motorcyclist’s eyes lock most briefly with the carnie’s and
now that wicked thing that was coming seems to have arrived.
Hospital
bed with starched hospital sheets and over the window dreary hospital drapes
and septic hospital smell and clinical hospital beep beep general din, brightly
lit fog gone. The motorcyclist looks around, looks down, bandages all over his
abdominals, breathes and it hurts slightly. He sits up and looks at another
young man sleeping in a bed next to him, bandages on him similar, a cop sitting
across from them, looking bored. Nods at the motorcyclist, says something about
being here for the room’s other occupant. Nurse comes in.
“How
are you feeling sir?”
“Ah,
hurts to breathe a bit. Better than I was though.”
“That’s
what I’m looking for.”
“How’d
I get here?”
“A
man found you on the edge of a road, brought you in. Even brought your bike.”
“Oh,
yeah?”
“He’s
actually waiting outside. Wanted to make sure you were okay. He’s been real
sweet, asking all of us about you. He seems really worried.” She pauses. “You
seem to be doing alright - would you like to see him?”
“Yeah,
sure, why not?”
The
carnie walks in, same wife beater, now even more soaked with sweat, same broken
looking face, but when he sees the motorcyclist sitting up in bed, his face
lights up.
9mm
As
the mid-morning sun floats hazy through the blinds, splitting itself up amongst
flasks and beakers, reflecting here off chrome barrel, light the colour of
peach ice cream, the old man sees a cone the colour of the light in the hand of
the daughter he almost had. Instead he has a Beretta and a lab (well, it’s not
his, as his boss is so fond of repeating, loud and stoned), and money and a
fast car, and then the kid came along and he knows it's silly and it's a trope
but he feels somehow like the kid belongs to him as well. Kid seems real, more
than the daughter at least.
Kid’s
asleep. Shouldn’t be. Supposed to be watching the cooks. Job. That’s the job.
Watch the cooks. Keep a gun under the shoulder and an eye open and that’s the
job. Cook looks bored, and a little bit hungover but she’s the best so who
cares if she has to drink just to make it through. Now he thinks of his brother
and his father and bonds of - but then he’s interrupted, something on the
monitor, outside front camera.
Not
right.
Something’s
not right.
Van
across the road.
No
other traffic.
Too
quiet.
Looks
closely. What could be glinting on that not distant rooftop? And that sound, is
that, he’s heard that sound, fwap fwap, oil fires, Kuwait, desert, guns, and he
checks his and his eyes linger briefly on the kid. He’s dressed cheap, beat up
grey sneakers, used to be white, torn shorts, t-shirt from some children’s
show, rising and falling with breaths in out in out, Sig Sauer strung up in a
shoulder holster, right side, kid’s a leftie. Doesn’t know why he just notices
this now. Then he taps the kid on the shoulder and the kid stirs. Old man takes
his gun from his own holster. Kid. Get your gun out. Then to the cook - in the
bathroom, now. Neither has to be told twice.
Old
man looks around the room, used to be a kid’s bedroom in a nice suburban home,
but then the neighborhood went down hill as some other neighborhood came up it.
On the second floor. Windows along one wall, facing an industrial site. Another
with no windows. Rest facing inwards, door in one to the bathroom, other to a
hallway. Tells the kid to watch the hall, looks out the window.
Downstairs
a door comes crashing inwards, hard, and he hears a gruff woman yell to the
doorman to get down, then he hears a short burst, MP5, he reckons. Boots on the
stairs. He makes a calculation internally, briefly, kicks open the door to the
bathroom, shoots the cook in the head, lights a pile of something dangerous and
powdered sitting amongst the beakers. Two minutes. Max.
Protection
inside if he goes inside if he plays it like he’s supposed to play it. For the
kid, maybe. Then to the kid Come on! And the kid turns from the hall and as he
does that voice again and freeze this time and the kid freezes, but the old
man, 9mm clears his holster, puts three in the cop, just like he was taught,
and he sees the cop go down but then another round strikes the kid in the
shoulder, and the man plays it now like he’s not supposed to play it and pulls
the kid into the room and slams the door (steel reinforced, few seconds, all
they need), then the kid turns his head to the old man. Blood, belly wound,
pretty bad. Could be worse but this is pretty bad, and then the kid opens his
mouth but the old man tells him to shut up, and they go to the window and the
old man opens it, pushes the kid to go, reminds him to roll and again the kid
starts to talk and again the old man tells him to shut up. Fire burning. Should
hit just the Wrong thing pretty soon now. Old man follows the kid out, feels
his joints try their socket limits upon impact, age infectious.
Get
away plan, simple, half a block, a car. Go.
Picks
the kid up, kid really hurting, old man can tell, start running, along the side
of the industrial site, cut in between some buildings. Old man was worried
about that sniper, apparently didn’t draw a bead fast enough. Or maybe something
else, who knows. The kid needs a break, breathing hard, bleeding more, old man
takes off his shirt, tears it like he was taught, tells the kid to use it to
staunch the bleeding, he’ll be fine, just gotta make it to the car. Then the
kid looks at the man again and starts talking, and this time he doesn’t stop
when told.
He
tells the man that the cops made the house because he gave it to them. He
needed a way out, he couldn’t do it. Wasn’t cut out for this life. Wasn’t cut
out for any life, maybe, but certainly not this one. Tells the old man to leave
him behind. Old man looks at him and all he can do is choke out that it doesn’t
matter.
It
does. This is it then, the old man considers with only passing notice given for
the blood that now coats his hand like fresh paint on the side of a house, the
end of everything. Bullets and blood, kid in him would’ve wanted this. Kid in
him’s dead though. Old man all that’s left, old man doesn’t wish for his
shootout in blood and fury, would’ve been content now to die quiet. Wrong life
for it though.
A
loud boom from behind, old man turns briefly to look at the fireball as the
house is propelled outwards by the disease that had been growing within.
Kid’s
breathing a little easier now. Old man tells him to move. Kid says no. Kid says
it’s over. Old man says it’s not over until guns are empty, car is shot to
hell, they lie dead in the street. Not there yet. Kid says he broke the rules.
Done everything he shouldn’t have. Old man only one ever been nice to him, went
against him, hard.
Old
man says it doesn’t matter.
Kid
says it’s all that matters.
Old
man begins to pull the kid along, and pretty soon the kid starts moving by his
own legs, and this is good the old man thinks, this isn’t going anywhere if
they don’t keep moving. Wonder cops aren’t on them already. SWAT pointman
(pointwoman?, vocabulary of violence, changing with the times) must be dead.
Doesn’t make sense though. But who knows - don’t count your blessings, isn’t
that what they say?
Out from
between the buildings, and the sun still laying low in the sky, cuts out hard
in front of them, blinded momentarily, not good, the old man thinks. Very much
not good. But the car, almost to the car, get in the car and drive the car and
get gone, boss will protect him, he’s good, he did what he was supposed to do.
Then the old man notices the kid’s breathing has slowed.
And then he
hears boots and he hears the chopper again, and cars, more cars, and then as
his vision clears, though the sun remains, cops all over him, and he knows he
doesn’t have much of a shot left. The kid fucked him, and the old man knows
this, and the old man whispers this to the kid, asks him why he did it, and the
kid says he doesn’t know, but he regretted it as soon as he did, it felt bad, felt
wrong, felt like he broke something sacred. Old man tells him he did, but he’s
just a kid and kids do stupid things, but he’s an old man and he’s used all his
second chances. Then he tells the kid to live, he has the chance now, life he
chooses, then he takes the kid’s gun, knows it’s a lie but says it anyway.
Two guns,
the kid in the old man’s dreams ended like this. He turns to the nearest car
and he sees guns sighted down all around him, and he starts to pull triggers,
bullets going all wild, doesn’t work like in the movies. His shadow is caught
long in the sun as that sniper puts him down, all 9mm rounds burying themselves
far from targets, trees and siding and all the rest but flesh.
And the old
man’s body falls next to the kid and the kid knows the old man is dead and he
wonders if he is too.
Date Night
The
woman stares at her glass, the way the stem tapers up, expands out, bleeding
edge, obfuscating restaurant beyond, empty chair across from her drawn into
sharp focus, even as all else seems to be drawn out into absurdity. Her eyes
drift towards her purse, from which her phone finds its way to her hand, checks
the time. Again. Ten minutes late. She knows she shouldn’t worry, but she hates
sitting in restaurants alone, always concerned that each sideways look is
couched in judgement.
Then
from behind her the man walks, confident and with a quick step, back straight,
expensive black sport coat, tight fitting white shirt, buttoned to a couple
inches below the neck, tailored jeans, just the right side of too tight,
clinging to his ass, just as the shirt shows off his pecs, chiseled with hard
work and protein supplements. He’s more handsome in person than in his
pictures. The woman feels vaguely self-conscious, naked in her cheap dress, set
self-consciously behind the empty table.
Then
the anxiety vanishes as she rises to meet the man and he takes her in a warm
embrace.
“It’s
good to finally meet you! You’re so much prettier in person! Not to say you’re
not beautiful in your pictures, haha...” His words are weighed with a careful
mix of confidence and that sort of subtle nerdy anxiety that the woman finds
instantly disarming. More importantly, the man in front of her isn’t so
different from the one pictured on his dating profile, unlike so many she’d
already met.
21st
century dating is one hell of a thing.
“Yeah,
I was going to say the same about you.”
“Oh,
don’t flatter me.” A brief pause - “So, you ever been here before?”
“No,
isn’t really my sort of... well...”
“Hah,
not mine either. But, you know, first impressions. You don’t mind it, do you?”
“No,
no, it’s nice.”
“Yeah,
I’ve heard the steak is good, unless, of course...”
“I’m
vegetarian.”
“So
am I, actually! Reason I say I’ve heard...”
They
talk on this way for a while, unconcerned and un-self conscious, a feeling that
surprises the woman, in the best possible way. Online dating so often turns
into an exercise in putting in the best foot forward, while simultaneously
trying to reckon the true self on the one sat across from you. Now though, both
those sat at the table feel real, honest, genuine, not their deepest self, that
reserved theoretically for some time down the line, but at least a function of
it, and not the function of the self reserved for cocktail parties and job
interviews.
“Me?
I grew up in a little town by the ocean. I was the football captain, actually.
Dated the prom queen and everything. Realized after I graduated that I didn’t
want to be that guy, so I went off to university, got a real career going.”
“You
miss it?”
“What?”
“Being,
well, important, I guess.”
“I
mean, sometimes. What I really remember is wandering down the boardwalk with
the carnival in town, prom queen on my arm and everything, it all felt just
like a Springsteen song. Seemed so perfect, so right. I don’t feel like that
much anymore. But maybe that’s for the best. Life isn’t perfect. Not supposed
to be.”
“Yeah,
that’s true. That’s definitely true. As soon as you know something for certain,
it ceases to really be interesting.”
“With
you there. So what about you? What’s your story?”
“I
grew up in the city. My mom never had much money, stuck between a half dozen
shitty waitressing jobs. I never knew my dad.”
“That
must have been hard.”
“I
don’t know - my mom said she doesn’t think he ever even knew I existed. They
got together, then he went off to Kuwait and never looked back. I always wonder
what he ended up doing in life, hell, I don’t know if he even made it home.”
“Have you ever thought
about looking him up?”
“Nah, I
figure if he’d cared to have a daughter, he would’ve at least talked to my mom
after he shipped out. After he did what he did, I don’t think I’d ever be able
to trust him. Or want to.”
And
so, common pleasantries slip away to reveal deeper truths amongst the two, life
and family and history and politics, those things you’re always told not to
mention on a first date, not unless you want to do something awful like forge a
Genuine Connection, and so between the two it was formed, and they eat their
meals, finish up desert.
“So
now comes the most fractious part of any first date - the check.” The man says
with a smile, and the woman braces. “I’m not one for traditions, but it’s also
my feeling that the person who asks should always pick up the bill.”
“Works
for me.”
Then
the bill is paid, and that awkward after date parting comes along, as it always
does.
“So.”
“So.”
“I, uh...
I’ve got a car here, if you want a ride home?”
“Yeah,
that’d be good. Cabs in this city always make me more than a little bit wary.”
“I don’t blame you.”
Cruising
down the freeway, windows open to the summer wind, music beating along quietly
under their conversation, the woman is reminded of movies she used to love as a
kid, and the man is reminded again of being a football captain, although he’s
replaced his cheap pick-up with an Audi, and outlaw country with mid-century
jazz.
“You
know, if you want, I don’t live too far from you. If you want, we could stop at
mine for a drink...”
“Uh,
well... I’m not...”
“Don’t
worry, when I say a drink, I mean a drink. You said you like whiskey? I’ve got
some good stuff.”
“I...
sure, why not. Just a drink.”
In
the elevator up to his twenty eighth floor apartment, towering above the city,
looking down from up on high, silent judgment, the woman stares nervously at
the floor, holding her purse close. As they approached his, the man got
quieter, and this seems wrong and he suddenly seems wrong, his posture more
slouching. Trust issues. That’s what her mom always said. She said she had her
reasons. Didn’t want to get into it. Reasons, good reasons.
Elevator
doors slide open with a ding, and the man smiles and holds out his hand,
indicating for her to step out first, then they walk together towards his flat
and he only smiles, but she still looks warily at the floor.
They
stop at the door to a corner apartment for the man to fish in his pockets for
his keys.
“Everything
okay?” He asks, a look of slight consternation on his face, keys still not
located.
“Yeah,
uh, why?” The man now switches pockets, and smiles again as he comes up
immediately with a set of keys, large and jangling.
“You
just seem a little quiet.”
“Oh,
yeah, sorry, I just... I’m fine, really.”
“So,
you got a preference on style of whiskey? Highland, Islay, Lowland, Speyside...
I think I don’t have anything from Campbeltown right now...” His apartment has
high ceilings, exotic wood, glass and concrete and granite, a wall full of
books, a TV bigger than some cars she’s owned. And from the corner facing out,
the whole city, arrayed in light, stretching out to stop abruptly with
farmland. Far down the coast line she sees a little patch of lights and then
the land comes to a head at a peninsula.
“Holy
shit...”
“100
mile view on a clear night, the Realtor told me. I didn’t really believe them
until I saw it myself.”
“Holy
fucking shit.”
“How
bout that whiskey then?”
“Uh,
I mean, when I said I liked whiskey, I was more talking JD, Southern Comfort...
maybe some Johnnie Walker Black if I’m feeling fancy... sorry...”
“Hey,
don’t apologize. I can introduce you to some of their Scottish brothers if you
want. If you’re not feeling adventurous tonight, I mix a pretty good old
fashioned.”
“I’m...
I’m sorry, but... I don’t think this is going to work.”
“What?”
“I...
it’s just not going to.”
“Look,
I’m sorry...” He seems perfectly calm, as if the entire situation is couched
firmly in the palm of his hand. “Really, I am. I didn’t... I’m sorry if this
was a little much... I’m... I’m not used to... I really am sorry.” And now the
woman’s truly confused, where is the truth, the suave guy who she’d been
talking so openly to all night, or the anxiety, the strangeness, the absurd
apartment.
“That’s...
sorry. Maybe I’m just being rash. I’ll stay for a drink, I guess. Just one. An
old fashioned sounds good.”
“Sure
- two old fashioneds coming up. Take a seat, it’ll just be a few minutes.” So
she sits on the couch, real leather, she realizes immediately, not that it
would be anything else in a place like this. Over in the kitchen, open to the
sitting room, mid-century modern she thinks the style is called, he mixes
drinks with smiles on his face. Then another burst of suspicion crosses her -
“Hey,
I thought you said you were vegetarian.”
“Uh...
oh yeah, I am.”
“Leather
couches?”
“They
were here when I moved in. I figured it would be wasteful to get rid of them,
leather or not.”
“Oh.
So, I don’t think you ever told me - what do you do for a living?”
“It’s
not important... I don’t really like to talk about it.” And again alarm bells
are ringing. And then he’s walking towards her with a drink in each hand. More
alarms, five alarm fire, twister over trailer park.
“You
know... you know what... I think, I think I forgot I have to be somewhere...”
she moves for the door and the man, his face sinks.
“Oh,
uh... I’m uh... I’m sorry... that’s too... I’ll call you then maybe?”
And
she’s out the door, and she’s on the elevator, and as the doors close, she
sinks to the ground, and holds her head in her hands.
