Plum-flesh

[Steve]

The air was humid and heavy, everyone walked the streets and sidewalks like stroke victims with aching migraines; in the heat i myself became delusional and believed that somehow had ingested mercury. It was only a matter of time before i climbed the hill that overlooked the school i had never attended, discovered the mad banters of a voice recoiling within itself— sit and speak wise-man language with the burning world caramelizing time; tasteed a hint of tin as though i bit into a mineral lozenge...and die.
I managed to carry myself into the grocery store, knocking carriages and arm baskets as i scuttled through the automatic guillotine, and was immediately blinded by large fluorescent tiles in the ceiling. For some unintelligible reason i began craving fruit, rushing passed people, bumping shoulders, imagining the plastic thwack of dropped apples into a bag and sweating as the air conditioning sent shivers up my back.
I came to the section of bins, crates filled with watermelon and stacks of oranges adjacent to kiwi. I fondled plums and coaxed two into my pockets; fingered the grapes and collapsed their bodies, drinking the juices. I pulled an orange “PAID” sticker and receipt from a pocket and took an apple to go, tossing the red-cleft chinned head in the air knocking a woman with an undisciplined child into the condiments shelf. I muttered an idiocratic mumble of apologies and advice on her mothering skills making my way passed, adjusting my hat and turning my attention to the condoms behind the customer service counter. It was all gibberish, half of them boasted lies like increasing stamina or pleasure for both partners, i didn’t need them then, i couldn’t even focus on the flashing lights above me or on my thoughts over the cackling of children and house wives let alone wrapping myself and mounting a woman.
The glass doors in the frozen food section were fogged, every other one had elementary graffiti—a child’s name crudely scripted or a stick figure of sorts; some were inhabited by heavy men thick in hair perspiring onto packages of icy peas. I made way close to the shore of cold air bellowing out from within the compartments. It was disgusting outside and i knew this as i made a left up the dairy aisle pretending to look at gallons of milk and picayune tubs of yogurt. I idled for awhile, postponing the trip into the world, poking loaves of half-off breads as i exited the grocers. An old man ahead of me turned back into the building muttering something dismal about a ride that hadn’t shown and glared at me with squinted eyes as i walked through the final doors.
Immediately i slowed, my appendages waved like weights on twine, pulled my shoulders into a C as i blindly missed being struck by a speeding car while stepping off the curb. The lines in the parking lot were white reflective paint shrinking everyone’s pupils as they looked over the waves of the black bay. I hadn’t the slightest clue why i was standing in front of a grocery store with stolen fruit in pocket, or why i stood in the middle of dark asphalt contemplating why i was there. There was no memory of what i had been doing before i walked outside; no recollection of what way i came, or where my apartment was. I knew the area. I knew it was Hawthorne Avenue where the donut shop sat, that it was Billings Mill Rd sitting a crossed from the fire department and that Wagaraw Avenue was somewhere out of walking distance behind me.
I knew there was a little Italian place down Belbaunt Avenue that had phenomenal dinners and were too expensive for me. Inside it had a fire place and a cotton-type comfort of an elderly family home. The majority of the colour of the interior was red.
There was a liquor store two blocks away that sold hard bottles after 10 pm. I saw a girl walk by and remembered her from a party as the girl a friend of mine had over his apartment the other month. I remembered walking into the house and watching her wrap a towel around herself through the open bathroom door; he had a rubber duck shower curtain that lost its magnets that secured it to the tub. I knew a lot of things, but why i was there i didn’t have any thoughts.
A girl i knew lived up the hill on the other side of the donut shop, in a white house with deciduous trees in the sidewalk, and decided I’d walk there and see if i could be helped any.
The backdoor was unlocked and her mother greeted me as i stepped onto the landing at the top of the stairs with a cordial smile. I was told that she wasn’t home; apparently she was off at her old high school visiting a teacher for a recommendation for an internship. The school was behind the food store where i had just been, but the walk down hill would be a whole hell of a lot easier than the trek up it. It didn’t take much consideration, i wanted to see her, my marrow turned to liquid at the need for her, and i thanked her mother heading down and out, onto the walk at the front of the house. There were children playing with water in every way from balloons to hoses and i thought about the draught we had two years ago, the water shortage of the west while they were fighting an insane strand of forest fires; i asked one of the kids to pour the hose over my head. “But you’ll get your clothes wet...” There was a little reluctance though it didn’t stand very long in the face of a green president that could buy her an ice-cream from the sketchy van later that night. With my face dripping, shirt soaked and hair drenched i happily began my journey down hills and turns; up hills and around bends; aching with every step, the anticipation of seeing her chest swell when she saw me ate my intestines and the heat became no more than a figment of my imagination.
I took the short cut she had shown me years ago, around the fire department and the baseball field, through the field and passed our tree. It was a tree of confidence and intimacy; it brought one of those sighs that you don’t release in public, and even with the odds against me that i was the only person to sit with her beneath its boughs i still ventured to claim the tree as our own. We never scarred it with our initials or blessed it with our kisses, but the words said in its company could never be duplicated.
I passed the tree swimming through the air, slipping on the slick grass succumbing to the need to sit down and catch my breath. It was getting close to dusk, the children of summer school had left hours ago—leaving the halls empty auditoriums echoing teenage symphonies of sex; text books; and angst—only a few teachers remained. The ground began to slip out from beneath me, like a conveyer belt of soil and grass, and i watched a stone pass me on the left as though he was an aggressive highway driver. The building didn’t seem further, but my field of vision shrank to the size of the mouth of a soda bottle, the hues and colours deepened against the flaming sky. A car passed on the road above me blaring synthesized music and the cheerful squirms of a couple occupying them selves at the start of evening.
I had given up hope and was dusting off my pants when i saw her small frame in the distance against the red bricks of academia. My first instincts were to rush onto her, pinning her in my arms as we collapsed onto the dampening grass, but thought otherwise by the time i had begun walking towards the school. Suddenly i stopped. Uncertainty and an immense weight of insecurity filled my mind. Instantaneously i became guilty of my feelings, how i was so easily fooled into thinking she would be shocked to see me, enthusiastic; no, utterly a victim of stolen words and breath so the only thing left was to weld her lips to mine and forever we would speak as one.
I was a mess. The slacks i had been wearing were worn and tired, the shirt partially wet and certain to smell of onions or stale salt-water and my shoes were patched together; barely even a sole left to them. I had dirty finger nails and two plums. I had even lost the apple. I tried to remember if the klutzy soccer-mom had forced me to miss or if i had dropped it on the walk, either of them. Somehow the apple was replaced with what i was doing. It wasn’t a flood of answer-memories as much as it was the casual speed of releasing clay pigeons to be shot in mid-air. I wasn’t living here anymore. I hadn’t lived here in three years. I had gone to college, graduated, married, divorced. I remembered where i lived; recalled the blue interior of my home and Tilstoy the cat waiting for me.
The light was growing faint and her body dimmed fast, i hauled myself down the grassy hill and sped walked to catch her before i lost sight. Her hair smelled like coconuts and her feet squeaked, i swore i could feel the warmth of her breath carried over her shoulder and into my face on the breeze. I reached and touched her shoulder. She was startled and plunged her arm into her pouch or purse, emerging with a dark cylinder.
There wasn’t much i could do. I didn’t think quickly and received fire water in the eyes, mouth, ears and nose. I fell to my knees in whimpers and screams, the muscles in my face twitched and began to burn worse. I called after her, banshee yelling my name and hers, shredding my throat with every gasp before i hoarsely moaned again. It felt like an eternity before she came back. The entire time i was predisposed to think about the plums in my pockets as i felt one rupture and release a cold sticky fluid onto my thigh.
I felt her hand on my shoulder, lips on mine—their coolness feeling like morphine to a wounded soldier—and then her soft words of apology seeping into my ears. There was no way i could speak, nothing audible would have escaped, my hand ruffled around inside the pockets, and removed the intact plum. I heard her giggle, then ask if i had stolen it for her, a nod of my head had her kissing my singed lips, which were slowly numbing. There was something else in my pocket, circular and angular, hard and unbendable. I slid it out into the blue-black of early night and watched it shimmer; from somewhere over my shoulder i heard “I do” then knew it was done. There was nothing i could do but assume that this was the last thing to remember, the reason for randomly traveling there; the lesson that i was meant to always remain relatively lost.
And on top of that hill with mangled plum-flesh in my pocket and love on my lips i died.