Post by Steve on Oct 10, 2008 19:00:05 GMT -5
The sun posed the usual threat of cancer, as do most elements in our daily lives now a day, and along with a disease there was also the glare.
I remember being young, age doesn’t really matter much, this thought not rating high on my timeline, watching the local news program on my family’s vintage (old and outdated are so negative) television. My father, who was always concerned about traffic and time, time and traffic and how much time there was before the traffic and if the traffic would affect his time and if there would be enough time to finish watching to find out about the traffic, would be anxiously waiting for the traffic announcement from the station’s ‘State of the art’ Highway Patrol Monitor: When they would warn all motorists of glare.
Glare...
As though it was some relation to a monster that sat beside the white solid line on the roadways; every now and again emerging from its slumber to devour fathers and mothers, aunts and uncles leaving their cars mangled against the guardrails. This, GLARE, would peel back the exoskeleton of vehicles and consume the inhabitants like a spider to a fly. And every day, worried about neither time nor traffic, I sat and watched the announcements. Concerned that Route 9 may have an encounter with this beast and would deprive me of a father.
My polyester blend, with some other lab descended material, gray suit hung desperately on my shoulders. The heat of the mid-day sun exhausted it so that the fabric was no longer an aid, but a hindrance that I constantly attempted to fix by thrusting my shoulders upward.
I stopped at a corner and craned my neck to see the street sign when I met my friend glare and squinted past her.
Maple.
Intersecting with…
Pine.
The two names offered a chance to escape the heat by questioning their compatibility.
After about four blue sports cars and two silver minivans, I decided that maple and some variation of nut, whether it was hazel or chestnut would be the best suitor.
I made a left onto Maple. It reminded me of oatmeal and Vermont.
The quota for the day was nearly met. Nothing seemed more thrilled about this than the shirt that was slowly adhering to my skin. Sweat thick with toxins, sweat that smelled of a night full of amphetamines, Bjork and sex. Random words that mix together in a crude beauty that only others as high as you could understand filled the sweat as it bled through my layers of clothing.
The path to the porch was worn. It resembled the face of a forty-year old smoker who had fought acne a chunk of their life. There were fragments missing. Huge craters that were broken powdered by the excessive coating of rock salt at the first sign of snow.
The flowers that suffocated the walk were wild. Mostly Morning Glories and Brown Eyed Susans. The journey up toward the white peeling patio was nothing more than a moment when I profiled the person dwelling there.
The mailbox, custom made and in the shape of a butterfly. I say custom made because of the poorly sanded edges and unevenly coated stain job. I studied the hinges; too many times before have I opened ones rusted and created such a noise that I disturbed the inhabitants before my profile of them was completed. My hand slipped between the creature’s wings and no sound of protest. From within the steel crate I removed an envelope and stuffed it into my inner breast pocket. Not before a brief assurance that it was incoming, and to see from what state it departed.
By the time knuckles were introduced to the bottom aluminum part of the screen door, I was fully aware of what must be done to appease this person.
I am sorry Mrs. Myrtle, but your husband’s mailbox that he made a few years prior to his cardiac arrest does not appeal to me;
though soon I would modestly proclaim otherwise.
Elizabeth was her middle name.
She told me this while biting down against one of her self-painted nails. The Roman purple chipped into tiny flecks adorned by her canines and incisors. The nail snapped viciously and I winced.
“I want to swim nude in the ocean…” throughout the course of the evening there had been many outbursts on all of our parts. This wasn’t the first.
“I want you to be there next to me.”
“I can’t swim.” Truthfully I couldn’t. My father working long construction hours had no time to teach me. And my mother could ironically only float.
“I want to rule the world…” I reply that that would be doable, so long as we didn’t have to swim anywhere or anytime.
I separated the capsule. My hands were trembling from the first three lines, and I poured the puvules onto the kitchen table. With a tablespoon I crushed the time released coating. I did this while holding a Bicycle poker card to block the stray ovals that shoot from beneath the silverware.
In my head I imagine the orange spheres as cannonballs. I tell no one.
While dispensing the shots of amphetamine (about 20 to 25mg of Adderall per 20ml of water mixed thoroughly in a shot glass) a friend kept up the conversation. I dare not call myself a conversationalist, but this poor fellow cannot survive anywhere that does not revolve around facts tossed out to the general public during commercials.
This is where time is.
This is where time will be.
No more glamour, no more drugs, we grew bored of words.
This is where time went when we weren’t watching.
Its carcass lies here to be found.
Elizabeth and I snuck to the upstairs. Teeth grinding and hearts beating as though they were the driving force behind the motor of an eighteen-wheeler going nowhere fast on an Arizona highway.
Teeth grinding we made love. There was no lying in freshly wet grass, saturated by the church’s sprinkler system (people don’t trust god when his home doesn’t have an impeccable lawn) gazing hopelessly at the stars.
No. We made love like ravenous animals that wanted to break the bounds of everything physical. Amphetamine pumping strong I knew Elizabeth, and Elizabeth knew me. And we were both ever the more learned about the world.
You learn to knock on the lower half of the doors after a few houses do not answer. It becomes an instinct to make as much ruckus as possible to disrupt the daily procedures being carried out within the home.
Nothing wakes someone up from a nap like a tap on aluminum by a ringed finger.
Nothing legal that is.
By shuffling feet I prepared myself for someone exhausted. Which in many cases turns out quite well, the person being so tired that they just agree to close to anything. In the other palm are those that leave you with bruised toes or split knuckles. With enough milking these injuries can assist you with future sales. But that’s the long slide. No need for that here.
The hand gripped the doorknob too quickly and accurate to be recently awoken. The pin inside of the lock dropped. There usually isn’t much time between this sound and the door being pried open cautiously.
Perhaps they’re mentally handicapped.
If they are, I am fucked.
I am not some one that is ignorant or shallow I just know a few things that many do not. Like our challenged friends. You have three typical types that are usually encountered.
Type A
The main characteristics of people that fall under this category are:
extremely frustrated; radically violent; physically abnormally large; and hard to open in a conversational stance. Overall they are not worth standing in this heat. Feeling your cheap suit become animate and thrust its threads beneath your skin. Slowly trying to assume control over your body. Type A is not the class that would end my day well.
Type B
Type B is people that live on their own, but have nurses around them the majority of the time. By majority of the time I mean every time the door opens it is the handi-capped person answering, but is soon interrupted by said nurse. You never actually get the chance to speak to them, even if you set all business aside, you’re just not allowed. All you’ll ever get is the brief sparkle in their eyes. The brief intrigue that another person has an interest in them for whatever reason.
They’re like the junkies on 3rd street. When they aren’t high you can’t speak to them because they are scurried away by the dealer that is ‘helping’ them get their fix. And the times they are, well, they are. And all you get is the ‘drowning angel’ eyes. It’s upsetting.
Type C
This is where you chose to have a soul or not.
People that live alone, mostly independent, but will never be able to care for another. They hold talks, and it makes a tiny part of you want to take advantage of them. Suddenly you are a teenager again, sitting on the same couch with the same drunk girl lying face first in your lap. Personal gain is just so close that it can’t be thought of. It is right before your eyes. In physical form. They bleed and cry, eat and defecate the same. They lock the doors at night. They lock the door to the bathroom when they masturbate the same as I. This is one of the few lines that I can see clearly and not leap over. To the teen-aged girl I just say:
I know that you woke up with a hangover the next morning.
The only evidence and comforting thing is a closed zipper
imprint running alongside of your face. Your finger tracing
it raises goose bumps thinking you’re unzipping your cheek
the indentation is so deep.
I know you are out there sighing with relief.
By the time the door opened I must have psyched myself out of at least 10 different profiles for this person.
The inside door wobbled, far past due for the touch of a husband, the bottom drug lazily against the carpet. I didn’t bother making eye contact, or even, remove my focus from the rug. Crumbs and pebbles shot out from beneath the heavy door.
“Could I help you sir?” without thinking I replied.
“I can fix that for you.” No one wants to hear what can be done.
They want to hear guarantees and lifetime prophecies.
Before I knew any better I was on all fours tending to the ailment like a stray mutt licking at another cur’s lesion. Gnawing on the frayed edges of the carpet to make it look less ragged.
In my right hand was an old toothbrush in my left was a glass of lemonade. I don’t even enjoy lemonade.
The door was raised half an inch from where the hinges once were.
“Do you have any children?” Her nightgown hovered like laundry on a washing line from the open door. “Are you married…”? “Do you …” between trying hard not to make the same face I did when I was 3 years old first tasting this awful beverage, it was hard to answer her questions as she asked them. “No.” “No.” “No.” just to be certain that the last question was taken care of. “No luck with the ladies?” her voice was quiet compared to the passing traffic to my left. “A young man like yourself, you should…”
“Have no problems finding a nice young girl” I finished the sentence for her. Mrs. Myrtle’s eyes flickered a bit. Not like the 3rd street side walkers.
The old woman’s eyes were faint blue. The colour that was magical but never appreciated because they were never as vibrant as what people wanted. Nothing is ever as vibrant and clear and pure as people want. But they were completely emotional, incapable of deceit or malicious intent. Nothing could ever be hidden. This was what made her the perfect model for grandmothers. She had lived a life without personal privacy. A life without a secret garden tended by the hands of deceit.
Only wildflowers from her lawn filled her breath.
Only wildflowers from her lawn rested in vases on the T.V set.
“So…” I felt this one coming as well. Her fragile arthritic hands fumbled inside of her change purse.
No politician, no orator of the 1800’s, no psychologist can talk an old woman out of giving someone a few dollars payment.
I stood, straightened myself and turned toward the door with the crisp currency balled in my hand. I would later fill out an order for 20 business cards. Emblazed on the front the words:
My cock is a disease…and it’s contagious.
My face stiff from the lemonade I waved for the first and last time to her.
“By the way Mrs. Myrtle…I love your mailbox.”
The company that I was employed by went out of business without notifying any of its 200 some odd employees about 2 months ago. By default this made me two things, unemployed and an unknowing con artist.
It means that for the past month and a half I have been taking people hard earned money (I like to think of it as clean) and sending it off to some non-existent corporation. To really piss a person off think also that that money, and the money sent by others like myself, wouldn’t even be going to whatever debts the company owed. Instead it would be pocketed by the owner who coincidentally had a Swiss account. Had I known this then, I would have stopped sending the money long before I ceased payment 2 weeks ago and skimmed more off of what I was coughing up to the business.
So I decided to make a trip down to the good old unemployment office. The day was nice and, well, not having enough money for gas, I figured it the best day to walk.
I kept repeating the message on my answering machine:
“Hi`ya, Stan, you won’t believe this but we don’t have a job anymore. Now, don’t go thinking that you were fired. No, no, the company declared bankruptcy about 2 months ago. Do you fucking believe it? I don’t know about you, but I’m going to try to get unemployment from these fuckers. If I can’t, I’m fucked. Call me; let me know if you need anything I’ll have my cancer phone on all day.”
John’s voice was calm, and he was probably the best person to call and let me know. I didn’t really know him. None of us really knew each other.
The most we knew was that someone else’s little line, whatever colour they were assigned, would be higher than your assigned coloured line and you’d associate that person’s name with nothing more than a number higher than yours. And at times, perhaps even a colour that was better than yours.
John was green.
I was magenta.
The line of work didn’t allow us to get attached to anyone. I guess this is why it took so long for the news to reach everybody. Unlike normal jobs, we had no communication with anyone. No union. No company meetings. The more I thought about it the more it all seemed rigged from the beginning.
Get a bunch of losers that won’t take their work seriously, won’t ask too many questions so long as you don’t ask too many things of them, and have them swindle people. After about a year claim bankruptcy and flee to whatever island or country you have had a fascination with since your youth. All in all I’d have to say it wasn’t a bad plan. Excluding the fact that I was a victim.
I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. I let people swarm around me like you’d let snow wrap around you while standing stoned waiting for the bus, cold air and wetness sending your body into bliss. Only now you felt peoples’ hands touch you all over. Fingers with long terrible claws grazed the fly of my pants. A hand sore and rough from harsh days laying brick swung against my ass. Shoulders beat my weak frame into submission. Breasts pressed firmly between my shoulder blades, I decided that unemployment could wait; it already had for 2 months. I needed to see Elizabeth.
Ok. I needed to get fucked by Elizabeth. Or at least score some crystal and get a blowjob.
Her apartment was across town, over a couple of blocks from 3rd street. It wasn’t a little quaint place by any stretch of the imagination. It was infested with every kind of pest imaginable. From roaches to mice to ants to ladybugs this apartment was always occupied.
The front yard was barren as though the ground salted a couple of years ago. From between the cracks in the cement walkway sprung up an occasional weed. Dandelion or baby milkweed, it didn’t matter, it wouldn’t survive anyhow. There was a wall blocking the property from the sidewalk. A shabby old thing that made people in the neighborhood walk feet from it, afraid that it would collapse on them. Every other house on the block had pushers out front of it, except hers.
The narrow 2 feet that you had to walk down in order to enter the house, she never used the front door, I never asked why, was canopied by a strange shrub that bloomed beautiful lily shaped flowers in late summer. It was out of place from looking at the house from the street, but once in the rear yard, everything fell into itself perfectly.
The entire yard was fenced in by these massive bushes giving that part of the outside complete privacy. All the way in the back was a simple work shed that the landlord used as storage. It had one lonely door and one lonesome window. Neither had a companion of the same structure. The window had a pair of false shutters. The kind of hinges attached to the house but do not move to close over the window. One side of it had pried itself from the building in a wind a storm and now rattled and banged and tapped in a stunning rhythm in every sort of wind.
No matter how much of a hurry, no matter whom you were, you had to stop and admire everything that surrounded you.
The screen door was falling off so I figured I’d just do a favor and tear it the rest of the way and knocked. I knew better than to knock. Only strangers knocked. And strangers visiting this neighborhood were usually dressed entirely in dark blue.
So I jimmied the inside door open and called out “Magenta” to let her know it was I coming in.
That was the drill.
Every time you did this you had to yell up something that only you and she would know about you. The first time, I remember because of how embarrassing it was. I let her mother know that I had a birthmark on my right ass cheek. This, if her mother wasn’t there, was supposed to show her that I enjoyed the night we had prior and hoped she would remember. Though it turned into a nickname for her mother to torture me with. All in good fun. Good clean sober living, as my father would say.
She was asleep on the sofa wearing a sweater of mine, so I settled in a pair of pants I had left there for days I crashed after work. I leaned over her and slid my hand into the sweater pocket and pulled out two Jacks. I assumed they were mine, being in my clothing and all, and headed towards the door to go find a holder.
Liz stirred as the door was shutting, but by that time I was already in awe over the back yard and determined to find some fine china or crystal.
“What ya need?”
“Two grams”
“scales?”
“Nah, white”
“what `ya keeping` slows `er fasts?”
“22350”
“two then”
The door shut behind me as I yelled “I can’t swim”. I woke her up and she was now in the shower undoubtedly pissed off. I cut her off and rolled a single that I found in my pocket and waited for the water to stop.
“Liz, here’s a little something I picked up, look by the door.” I said and walked back into the living room to finish off the bag in two swift swoops. Now my nasal membrane was inflamed and burning, devouring the amphetamine like a dry drunk.
“I knew it was you!” It wasn’t quite the reaction I was looking for, but at least it wasn’t serious. “I woke up and went to order Chinese,” she was standing in front of me in just her underwear and tank top. Her ribs were pressing hard against her soft skin. Her face was worn but comforting, and her hair always smelled like strawberries that were set a fire. Not the odor of something burnt, but a fragrance so strong that sleeping beside her and not end up with your fellow friend getting excited was impossible.
“When I saw that the twenty bucks I had was missing.” She smiled and I smiled back knowing that I had taken forty.
We moved her sofa so that it faced the rear window and we talked about the scenery and how she loved to eat the flowers that blossomed and practically fell through an open window.
“You have to eat the ones that aren’t very fragrant; otherwise your stomach has mild convulsions. But you have to make sure that you eat ones that are brightly coloured. The bright ones that have a faint smell are the ones that have the least interaction with your stomach acids. Oh, and do not get me started on the texture. You have…” I could tell that the two and a half lines I broke for her were off and doing her fine.
“ I’m sorry, I got the rambles. You should know better than to let me go on like that.” She smiled and slipped her tongue into my mouth. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that although she was rambling, it was the fact that she was eating random flowers that jolted me a bit.
So I tangled my tongue around hers, and by the time I knew it I was inside of her feeling her incisors and eye-teeth in a more tender way than the beautiful flowers were doomed to feel.
I awoke late in the night to a favorite Elliot album spinning his whispers and the sleepy haze diluting his drums until it was nothing more than his voice with chords in the background. All of his fears heard not in the words but in the tongue against teeth sounds and his preparation of the next to be sung.
I drifted back to sleep with the brief image of Liz holding a feather duster. She rotated it as she flung the dirt into the air where it would settle into its sloth like life on some other shelf or surface. I dreamt a Carol world of miniatures and flowers; hallways lined with Bukowski and Basho, a roof above without shingle or density revealing the sky. Liz was wandering from flower to flower with a wet cloth and a clam pot filled with water. The pattern was that she would wipe the petals first; rinse the cloth, then proceeded to wipe the leaves and stems as well. She was still dressed in the tank top and plain black bikini cut bottoms that she emerged from the shower in and she moved silently like a hummingbird from the flora to the sofa. Liz organized the pillows then danced to the table where the phone (which was shut off two months prior) and a few nic nacs were forgotten. She lift them into the air and I felt my stomach clench, then saw the small ravine in her chest that SHE doesn’t even consider cleavage. The spot where the miniatures slept was wiped clean and the figures were set back. I began blinking wondering how I went to being so small and why.
I remember being young, age doesn’t really matter much, this thought not rating high on my timeline, watching the local news program on my family’s vintage (old and outdated are so negative) television. My father, who was always concerned about traffic and time, time and traffic and how much time there was before the traffic and if the traffic would affect his time and if there would be enough time to finish watching to find out about the traffic, would be anxiously waiting for the traffic announcement from the station’s ‘State of the art’ Highway Patrol Monitor: When they would warn all motorists of glare.
Glare...
As though it was some relation to a monster that sat beside the white solid line on the roadways; every now and again emerging from its slumber to devour fathers and mothers, aunts and uncles leaving their cars mangled against the guardrails. This, GLARE, would peel back the exoskeleton of vehicles and consume the inhabitants like a spider to a fly. And every day, worried about neither time nor traffic, I sat and watched the announcements. Concerned that Route 9 may have an encounter with this beast and would deprive me of a father.
My polyester blend, with some other lab descended material, gray suit hung desperately on my shoulders. The heat of the mid-day sun exhausted it so that the fabric was no longer an aid, but a hindrance that I constantly attempted to fix by thrusting my shoulders upward.
I stopped at a corner and craned my neck to see the street sign when I met my friend glare and squinted past her.
Maple.
Intersecting with…
Pine.
The two names offered a chance to escape the heat by questioning their compatibility.
After about four blue sports cars and two silver minivans, I decided that maple and some variation of nut, whether it was hazel or chestnut would be the best suitor.
I made a left onto Maple. It reminded me of oatmeal and Vermont.
The quota for the day was nearly met. Nothing seemed more thrilled about this than the shirt that was slowly adhering to my skin. Sweat thick with toxins, sweat that smelled of a night full of amphetamines, Bjork and sex. Random words that mix together in a crude beauty that only others as high as you could understand filled the sweat as it bled through my layers of clothing.
The path to the porch was worn. It resembled the face of a forty-year old smoker who had fought acne a chunk of their life. There were fragments missing. Huge craters that were broken powdered by the excessive coating of rock salt at the first sign of snow.
The flowers that suffocated the walk were wild. Mostly Morning Glories and Brown Eyed Susans. The journey up toward the white peeling patio was nothing more than a moment when I profiled the person dwelling there.
The mailbox, custom made and in the shape of a butterfly. I say custom made because of the poorly sanded edges and unevenly coated stain job. I studied the hinges; too many times before have I opened ones rusted and created such a noise that I disturbed the inhabitants before my profile of them was completed. My hand slipped between the creature’s wings and no sound of protest. From within the steel crate I removed an envelope and stuffed it into my inner breast pocket. Not before a brief assurance that it was incoming, and to see from what state it departed.
By the time knuckles were introduced to the bottom aluminum part of the screen door, I was fully aware of what must be done to appease this person.
I am sorry Mrs. Myrtle, but your husband’s mailbox that he made a few years prior to his cardiac arrest does not appeal to me;
though soon I would modestly proclaim otherwise.
Elizabeth was her middle name.
She told me this while biting down against one of her self-painted nails. The Roman purple chipped into tiny flecks adorned by her canines and incisors. The nail snapped viciously and I winced.
“I want to swim nude in the ocean…” throughout the course of the evening there had been many outbursts on all of our parts. This wasn’t the first.
“I want you to be there next to me.”
“I can’t swim.” Truthfully I couldn’t. My father working long construction hours had no time to teach me. And my mother could ironically only float.
“I want to rule the world…” I reply that that would be doable, so long as we didn’t have to swim anywhere or anytime.
I separated the capsule. My hands were trembling from the first three lines, and I poured the puvules onto the kitchen table. With a tablespoon I crushed the time released coating. I did this while holding a Bicycle poker card to block the stray ovals that shoot from beneath the silverware.
In my head I imagine the orange spheres as cannonballs. I tell no one.
While dispensing the shots of amphetamine (about 20 to 25mg of Adderall per 20ml of water mixed thoroughly in a shot glass) a friend kept up the conversation. I dare not call myself a conversationalist, but this poor fellow cannot survive anywhere that does not revolve around facts tossed out to the general public during commercials.
This is where time is.
This is where time will be.
No more glamour, no more drugs, we grew bored of words.
This is where time went when we weren’t watching.
Its carcass lies here to be found.
Elizabeth and I snuck to the upstairs. Teeth grinding and hearts beating as though they were the driving force behind the motor of an eighteen-wheeler going nowhere fast on an Arizona highway.
Teeth grinding we made love. There was no lying in freshly wet grass, saturated by the church’s sprinkler system (people don’t trust god when his home doesn’t have an impeccable lawn) gazing hopelessly at the stars.
No. We made love like ravenous animals that wanted to break the bounds of everything physical. Amphetamine pumping strong I knew Elizabeth, and Elizabeth knew me. And we were both ever the more learned about the world.
You learn to knock on the lower half of the doors after a few houses do not answer. It becomes an instinct to make as much ruckus as possible to disrupt the daily procedures being carried out within the home.
Nothing wakes someone up from a nap like a tap on aluminum by a ringed finger.
Nothing legal that is.
By shuffling feet I prepared myself for someone exhausted. Which in many cases turns out quite well, the person being so tired that they just agree to close to anything. In the other palm are those that leave you with bruised toes or split knuckles. With enough milking these injuries can assist you with future sales. But that’s the long slide. No need for that here.
The hand gripped the doorknob too quickly and accurate to be recently awoken. The pin inside of the lock dropped. There usually isn’t much time between this sound and the door being pried open cautiously.
Perhaps they’re mentally handicapped.
If they are, I am fucked.
I am not some one that is ignorant or shallow I just know a few things that many do not. Like our challenged friends. You have three typical types that are usually encountered.
Type A
The main characteristics of people that fall under this category are:
extremely frustrated; radically violent; physically abnormally large; and hard to open in a conversational stance. Overall they are not worth standing in this heat. Feeling your cheap suit become animate and thrust its threads beneath your skin. Slowly trying to assume control over your body. Type A is not the class that would end my day well.
Type B
Type B is people that live on their own, but have nurses around them the majority of the time. By majority of the time I mean every time the door opens it is the handi-capped person answering, but is soon interrupted by said nurse. You never actually get the chance to speak to them, even if you set all business aside, you’re just not allowed. All you’ll ever get is the brief sparkle in their eyes. The brief intrigue that another person has an interest in them for whatever reason.
They’re like the junkies on 3rd street. When they aren’t high you can’t speak to them because they are scurried away by the dealer that is ‘helping’ them get their fix. And the times they are, well, they are. And all you get is the ‘drowning angel’ eyes. It’s upsetting.
Type C
This is where you chose to have a soul or not.
People that live alone, mostly independent, but will never be able to care for another. They hold talks, and it makes a tiny part of you want to take advantage of them. Suddenly you are a teenager again, sitting on the same couch with the same drunk girl lying face first in your lap. Personal gain is just so close that it can’t be thought of. It is right before your eyes. In physical form. They bleed and cry, eat and defecate the same. They lock the doors at night. They lock the door to the bathroom when they masturbate the same as I. This is one of the few lines that I can see clearly and not leap over. To the teen-aged girl I just say:
I know that you woke up with a hangover the next morning.
The only evidence and comforting thing is a closed zipper
imprint running alongside of your face. Your finger tracing
it raises goose bumps thinking you’re unzipping your cheek
the indentation is so deep.
I know you are out there sighing with relief.
By the time the door opened I must have psyched myself out of at least 10 different profiles for this person.
The inside door wobbled, far past due for the touch of a husband, the bottom drug lazily against the carpet. I didn’t bother making eye contact, or even, remove my focus from the rug. Crumbs and pebbles shot out from beneath the heavy door.
“Could I help you sir?” without thinking I replied.
“I can fix that for you.” No one wants to hear what can be done.
They want to hear guarantees and lifetime prophecies.
Before I knew any better I was on all fours tending to the ailment like a stray mutt licking at another cur’s lesion. Gnawing on the frayed edges of the carpet to make it look less ragged.
In my right hand was an old toothbrush in my left was a glass of lemonade. I don’t even enjoy lemonade.
The door was raised half an inch from where the hinges once were.
“Do you have any children?” Her nightgown hovered like laundry on a washing line from the open door. “Are you married…”? “Do you …” between trying hard not to make the same face I did when I was 3 years old first tasting this awful beverage, it was hard to answer her questions as she asked them. “No.” “No.” “No.” just to be certain that the last question was taken care of. “No luck with the ladies?” her voice was quiet compared to the passing traffic to my left. “A young man like yourself, you should…”
“Have no problems finding a nice young girl” I finished the sentence for her. Mrs. Myrtle’s eyes flickered a bit. Not like the 3rd street side walkers.
The old woman’s eyes were faint blue. The colour that was magical but never appreciated because they were never as vibrant as what people wanted. Nothing is ever as vibrant and clear and pure as people want. But they were completely emotional, incapable of deceit or malicious intent. Nothing could ever be hidden. This was what made her the perfect model for grandmothers. She had lived a life without personal privacy. A life without a secret garden tended by the hands of deceit.
Only wildflowers from her lawn filled her breath.
Only wildflowers from her lawn rested in vases on the T.V set.
“So…” I felt this one coming as well. Her fragile arthritic hands fumbled inside of her change purse.
No politician, no orator of the 1800’s, no psychologist can talk an old woman out of giving someone a few dollars payment.
I stood, straightened myself and turned toward the door with the crisp currency balled in my hand. I would later fill out an order for 20 business cards. Emblazed on the front the words:
My cock is a disease…and it’s contagious.
My face stiff from the lemonade I waved for the first and last time to her.
“By the way Mrs. Myrtle…I love your mailbox.”
The company that I was employed by went out of business without notifying any of its 200 some odd employees about 2 months ago. By default this made me two things, unemployed and an unknowing con artist.
It means that for the past month and a half I have been taking people hard earned money (I like to think of it as clean) and sending it off to some non-existent corporation. To really piss a person off think also that that money, and the money sent by others like myself, wouldn’t even be going to whatever debts the company owed. Instead it would be pocketed by the owner who coincidentally had a Swiss account. Had I known this then, I would have stopped sending the money long before I ceased payment 2 weeks ago and skimmed more off of what I was coughing up to the business.
So I decided to make a trip down to the good old unemployment office. The day was nice and, well, not having enough money for gas, I figured it the best day to walk.
I kept repeating the message on my answering machine:
“Hi`ya, Stan, you won’t believe this but we don’t have a job anymore. Now, don’t go thinking that you were fired. No, no, the company declared bankruptcy about 2 months ago. Do you fucking believe it? I don’t know about you, but I’m going to try to get unemployment from these fuckers. If I can’t, I’m fucked. Call me; let me know if you need anything I’ll have my cancer phone on all day.”
John’s voice was calm, and he was probably the best person to call and let me know. I didn’t really know him. None of us really knew each other.
The most we knew was that someone else’s little line, whatever colour they were assigned, would be higher than your assigned coloured line and you’d associate that person’s name with nothing more than a number higher than yours. And at times, perhaps even a colour that was better than yours.
John was green.
I was magenta.
The line of work didn’t allow us to get attached to anyone. I guess this is why it took so long for the news to reach everybody. Unlike normal jobs, we had no communication with anyone. No union. No company meetings. The more I thought about it the more it all seemed rigged from the beginning.
Get a bunch of losers that won’t take their work seriously, won’t ask too many questions so long as you don’t ask too many things of them, and have them swindle people. After about a year claim bankruptcy and flee to whatever island or country you have had a fascination with since your youth. All in all I’d have to say it wasn’t a bad plan. Excluding the fact that I was a victim.
I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. I let people swarm around me like you’d let snow wrap around you while standing stoned waiting for the bus, cold air and wetness sending your body into bliss. Only now you felt peoples’ hands touch you all over. Fingers with long terrible claws grazed the fly of my pants. A hand sore and rough from harsh days laying brick swung against my ass. Shoulders beat my weak frame into submission. Breasts pressed firmly between my shoulder blades, I decided that unemployment could wait; it already had for 2 months. I needed to see Elizabeth.
Ok. I needed to get fucked by Elizabeth. Or at least score some crystal and get a blowjob.
Her apartment was across town, over a couple of blocks from 3rd street. It wasn’t a little quaint place by any stretch of the imagination. It was infested with every kind of pest imaginable. From roaches to mice to ants to ladybugs this apartment was always occupied.
The front yard was barren as though the ground salted a couple of years ago. From between the cracks in the cement walkway sprung up an occasional weed. Dandelion or baby milkweed, it didn’t matter, it wouldn’t survive anyhow. There was a wall blocking the property from the sidewalk. A shabby old thing that made people in the neighborhood walk feet from it, afraid that it would collapse on them. Every other house on the block had pushers out front of it, except hers.
The narrow 2 feet that you had to walk down in order to enter the house, she never used the front door, I never asked why, was canopied by a strange shrub that bloomed beautiful lily shaped flowers in late summer. It was out of place from looking at the house from the street, but once in the rear yard, everything fell into itself perfectly.
The entire yard was fenced in by these massive bushes giving that part of the outside complete privacy. All the way in the back was a simple work shed that the landlord used as storage. It had one lonely door and one lonesome window. Neither had a companion of the same structure. The window had a pair of false shutters. The kind of hinges attached to the house but do not move to close over the window. One side of it had pried itself from the building in a wind a storm and now rattled and banged and tapped in a stunning rhythm in every sort of wind.
No matter how much of a hurry, no matter whom you were, you had to stop and admire everything that surrounded you.
The screen door was falling off so I figured I’d just do a favor and tear it the rest of the way and knocked. I knew better than to knock. Only strangers knocked. And strangers visiting this neighborhood were usually dressed entirely in dark blue.
So I jimmied the inside door open and called out “Magenta” to let her know it was I coming in.
That was the drill.
Every time you did this you had to yell up something that only you and she would know about you. The first time, I remember because of how embarrassing it was. I let her mother know that I had a birthmark on my right ass cheek. This, if her mother wasn’t there, was supposed to show her that I enjoyed the night we had prior and hoped she would remember. Though it turned into a nickname for her mother to torture me with. All in good fun. Good clean sober living, as my father would say.
She was asleep on the sofa wearing a sweater of mine, so I settled in a pair of pants I had left there for days I crashed after work. I leaned over her and slid my hand into the sweater pocket and pulled out two Jacks. I assumed they were mine, being in my clothing and all, and headed towards the door to go find a holder.
Liz stirred as the door was shutting, but by that time I was already in awe over the back yard and determined to find some fine china or crystal.
“What ya need?”
“Two grams”
“scales?”
“Nah, white”
“what `ya keeping` slows `er fasts?”
“22350”
“two then”
The door shut behind me as I yelled “I can’t swim”. I woke her up and she was now in the shower undoubtedly pissed off. I cut her off and rolled a single that I found in my pocket and waited for the water to stop.
“Liz, here’s a little something I picked up, look by the door.” I said and walked back into the living room to finish off the bag in two swift swoops. Now my nasal membrane was inflamed and burning, devouring the amphetamine like a dry drunk.
“I knew it was you!” It wasn’t quite the reaction I was looking for, but at least it wasn’t serious. “I woke up and went to order Chinese,” she was standing in front of me in just her underwear and tank top. Her ribs were pressing hard against her soft skin. Her face was worn but comforting, and her hair always smelled like strawberries that were set a fire. Not the odor of something burnt, but a fragrance so strong that sleeping beside her and not end up with your fellow friend getting excited was impossible.
“When I saw that the twenty bucks I had was missing.” She smiled and I smiled back knowing that I had taken forty.
We moved her sofa so that it faced the rear window and we talked about the scenery and how she loved to eat the flowers that blossomed and practically fell through an open window.
“You have to eat the ones that aren’t very fragrant; otherwise your stomach has mild convulsions. But you have to make sure that you eat ones that are brightly coloured. The bright ones that have a faint smell are the ones that have the least interaction with your stomach acids. Oh, and do not get me started on the texture. You have…” I could tell that the two and a half lines I broke for her were off and doing her fine.
“ I’m sorry, I got the rambles. You should know better than to let me go on like that.” She smiled and slipped her tongue into my mouth. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that although she was rambling, it was the fact that she was eating random flowers that jolted me a bit.
So I tangled my tongue around hers, and by the time I knew it I was inside of her feeling her incisors and eye-teeth in a more tender way than the beautiful flowers were doomed to feel.
I awoke late in the night to a favorite Elliot album spinning his whispers and the sleepy haze diluting his drums until it was nothing more than his voice with chords in the background. All of his fears heard not in the words but in the tongue against teeth sounds and his preparation of the next to be sung.
I drifted back to sleep with the brief image of Liz holding a feather duster. She rotated it as she flung the dirt into the air where it would settle into its sloth like life on some other shelf or surface. I dreamt a Carol world of miniatures and flowers; hallways lined with Bukowski and Basho, a roof above without shingle or density revealing the sky. Liz was wandering from flower to flower with a wet cloth and a clam pot filled with water. The pattern was that she would wipe the petals first; rinse the cloth, then proceeded to wipe the leaves and stems as well. She was still dressed in the tank top and plain black bikini cut bottoms that she emerged from the shower in and she moved silently like a hummingbird from the flora to the sofa. Liz organized the pillows then danced to the table where the phone (which was shut off two months prior) and a few nic nacs were forgotten. She lift them into the air and I felt my stomach clench, then saw the small ravine in her chest that SHE doesn’t even consider cleavage. The spot where the miniatures slept was wiped clean and the figures were set back. I began blinking wondering how I went to being so small and why.