Fools and fool

We walked out to the parking lot together. My face ached and I wondered what I was doing walking side by side with Daniel. Everything was going well tonight. Then I began to remember that the fact that I was here, with this girl and her problems, was all a result of things not being alright. I thought about Rebecca and wondered what she was doing tonight.

Daniel and I talked through the walk. I expressed my regrets about the events of that evening and he waved them off. “As long as you didn’t dick her.” Were his exact words. He told me some things about himself, which I didn’t listen to, and I told him a bit about myself.

“This is me.” Daniel said. It was surreal that he was so amicable. Like we’d met at a bar and had become fast drinking friends. I wondered if I had met him in a different life if we could have been enemies. He watched me over the roof of his tiny car. Those eyes of his were still gauging me. Maybe we were enemies and I wasn’t realizing it.

I rubbed my cheek and waved to him. This caused him to grin foolishly. I turned and began walking toward my own car when he shouted, “Take care of your girl Sidney.” While it sounded concerned it had the veil of a threat cast over it. Could he really be intending to visit a similar evening on me?

He ducked into his car and started it. Within moments he was weaving out of the lot. I watched the cherry lights disappear behind a crop of trees and stood for a moment longer wondering if I was a foolish person. I shook myself of the feeling and continued to my car.

Fumbling the keys and still rubbing the ache in my face I heard the sound of someone calling my name. “Please God no.” I begged. The call came again, closer, more insistent. I turned and concluded that I was a fool like no other.

Seattle jogged up to me, her auburn hair bouncing, not to mention a great deal of commotion beneath her shirt. “Please don’t leave like this.” She said though her panting.

“Like what?” I asked. Having been knocked to the deck by someone half my weight? Having to suffer his kindness after being a party to betrayal? Realizing that I’m only continuing to complicate my situation?

“Without letting me explain.” She said. Being the fool I was, I waited to hear it.

*****

Short one tonight.

Shiners and sentiments

               She opened the door slowly, a bit too dramatically. I expected a hulking behemoth to step through, his head bent to the side and still scraping the top of the door. Instead I was greeted by a slender man. He wore a flannel shirt and heavy jeans that made me think of a lumberjack. I had imagined Paul Bunyan coming in. I got his sickly cousin instead.

               “What’s going on?” He asked. His voice was far deeper and harsher than his bent rail frame would indicate.

               Seattle fixed him with her best leer and asked, “What are you doing here?”

               The man slash boy ignored her and studied me. He went as far as uncurling his back as he sized me up. I felt truly awkward being a third party to whatever this event was.

               Seattle watched him, he watched me and I wished I could find a way out. I had foolishly thought that things would be simpler if I stepped out of my life for a second and into someone else’s. Sadly it was the same insanity, different crazy.

               A thin and gnarled hand came up and pressed off my chest. It took me a moment to realize he was pushing me around. I did stagger backwards a little but I did it as he touched me as opposed to him forcing me.

               “Don’t you dare!” Seattle exclaimed.

               The gnarled hand hung in the air for a moment before curling into a fist. I watched this in utter disbelief. I’m not in any great shape but I was sure I could hold my own against whatever scrappy moves this guy could throw at me. His eyes were furrowed and he looked to be pretty pissed. Something told me that I didn’t get the full story with this girl and her ex. His gaze told was not that of a psychopath but one of betrayal. Just what in the fuck did I think coming back to her place would bring?

               He took a step forward and I lost my resolve on fighting back. “Look, there’s been a mistake. I should be going.”

               “The mistake is you didn’t.” He snarled.

               “That I didn’t leave?” I was confused. Was I supposed to be here and just leave early? Maybe he was trying to do a catchy movie line. It felt really weak and dumb.

               During those thoughts is when his fist came around. A couple of lights popped in my head and I found myself breathing the fibers of the carpet. My cheekbone and the bridge of my nose felt like they’d had a door slammed into them.

               “What the fuck?” Someone said. At first I thought it might be the roommate. Then it occurred to me that it was probably Seattle. No one was rushing to my side so I stood slowly.

               “I come back here and find you with him?” The guy asks. With his gnarled finger pointed at me. I wondered if I was someone special or of note. I also wondered if the world wouldn’t spin for a moment so I could stand straight.

               “I’m out there meeting people.” Seattle yelled, “We’re taking a break, he’s taking a break from his girl too.” This was news to me.

               “Maybe I should go and fuck his girl then while he sits here and fucks you. Then we can all be clear headed and know that we really just fucked ourselves.” That statement seemed kind of thoughtful and possibly insightful.

               “Well what the hell do you care?” Seattle continued to yell, “I told you to leave me alone. You apparently don’t give a shit about what I say.”

               With unsure steps I began to sneak to the door. I didn’t make it halfway across the room when Seattle grabbed my arm and threw me out of it. “Both of you just get out.” Her room door slammed shut behind us and we stood awkwardly in the hall next to each other. He stood, I swayed. Seattle’s roommate watched us from the couch. Her feet up on the armrest, tiny pink socks pointed at us. With a blank expression she pointed at the door.

               The guy grabbed my arm and carried me out. He made sure to close the door behind me then we stood side by side awkwardly outside the apartment. With a sigh his shoulders dropped and he curled lower towards the floor. “Sorry about the hit.”

               The transformation left me stunned, “No problem?”

               “She just knows how to piss me off and does it.”

               “You’re not angry at me?” I asked in confusion.

               “Of course I am. But I got carried away.” He stepped closer and inspected my eye. “It’ll be black tomorrow. Put a cool slab of meat on it.”

               “Why are you being nice after that?”

               “Because you don’t know me and I don’t know you.” He explained, “You look like a nice guy, I too am nice. When I don’t walk in on my girl with a guy near her bed.”

               “Understandable reaction.” I imagined walking in on someone with Rebecca. I can’t say for sure that I would react the same way. Sure as hell I wouldn’t be nice to them afterwards. I wondered if that would make me a bad person or if this guy was daffy.

               “Anyways I’m sorry to hear about your girl.”

               My ire rose, “What?”

               “You’re temporarily separated too. At least that’s what she said.”

               My hackles came down as I remembered the muffled conversation. “Right.”

               “Anyways, sorry for the hit.” He extended the hand again. This time it came in an open palm. What a varied night that hand has had. “I’m Daniel.”

               “Sidney.”

We shook hands for a surreal moment. Then he leaned in close and looked me in the eyes. He spoke slowly and harshly, “Don’t go near her again.” And made a point of squeezing my hand.

Lacerations and trouble

“Are you here?” A voice called from the hall.

Seattle leaned out her door and began whispering to someone, probably the roommate.

I continued to study the pictures as the girls spoke. There was something amiss in the pattern, places where it looked patched up. Just in the say that some photos looked like they were pulled further out of the group, like a cut tightening the skin around as it sealed.

Seattle closed her door softly and strode back beside me. “Are there pictures missing?” I inquired.

She didn’t have to look at where I pointed. “Yeah they were of someone who’s since fallen out of favor.”

“The old boyfriend.” I asked.

She nodded slowly. I didn’t feel the need to press her for more. <y discovery was apparently not planned and had soured the moment. “I like it, different style to hanging pictures up.”

She smiled. I wasn’t getting tired of seeing that, “Beats frames.”

For a while we talked and she explained the places she’d been and what they did. She didn’t bother too much with names, instead focusing on the experience of each location that was shot and tacked to her wall.

There was a quiet knock on the outside door. A shuffling indicated that the roommate was scurrying to answer it. Seattle continued to weave her tales. She stopped weaving when we heard a chirp from outside. She stood straight up and looked at her door. From the expression on her face I expected it to burst open.  

Quiet voices were heard on the other side. One voice was sternly quiet and the other was insistently quiet. Then came the footsteps. They were heavier than the roommates. They were also slower and cautious. I could feel the hairs on my neck standing on end.

               “I know you’re in there.” Came a gruff and insistent voice.

Something small and frozen inside of me burst and filled me with a chill. “The old boyfriend?” I asked, a shiver running down my vertebrae at the look on Seattle’s face.

“Don’t say a word.” She commanded.

Photos and Chairmen

She led me by the hand into her abode. Her apartment was not unlike mine. It sported a Spartan appearance with a small adjustment to the curtains and one well placed photograph centered and above the couch. No animal greeted me at the door or called with a whimper from another room. I felt reassured in viewing this display of nothing.

“My roommate is a bit of a Nazi so forgive me if the place looks a little blah.” She apologized.

So this was the roommate’s doing. What horror would this woman spring on me? A room full of birds and bird like things? God forbid its cats. Though Bowie did leave an impression in my sour disposition towards cats and their pompous nature, he did it with a bit of flair.

“No problem.” I muttered looking about and trying to imagine what the walls would be lined with. Would she spray it pink and adorn unicorns across the walls? Maybe she would design it so that it would look as though a cherub had regurgitated while spinning on a desk chair. Maybe she was a devil worshipper and the room would be black as night lit with glowing embers from extinguished candles that wafted smells of apple pie.

Still holding my hand and dragging me through the hall we darted into her room. I tried to catch a glimpse of the roommate through a crack in the door but with the speed we moved into the room and the scant viewing port I could only make out a mess of black hair, possibly curly or recently washed.

Seattle’s room was not something I would have imagined. Along a strip of one wall in a scattered mosaic were a few dozen black and white photos from movies. On the smaller wall there were other photos framing a window. These were not just black and white, and they portrayed Seattle with friends and family in a variety of poses and situations. Some were tasteful angles and artful, others were goofy, with winks and playful seriousness. Girls stuck their pink tongues out, a few bore metallic accessories, or threw their arms round each other with their faces frozen mid excited scream.

“Fancy yourself a photographer?” I asked while my eyes wandered over each picture. The images of people taken in a moment of thought or great emotion caught my attention more than the ones filled with merriment and camaraderie.

Her room was painted a deep indigo. I imagine this is what it must be like to live within an eggplant, I didn’t voice this observation. The bed was large and the sheets were dark blue. Maybe it’s not an eggplant, maybe it’s the inside of a bruise.

“I like taking pictures.” She watched me study her hidden pleasure.

“Thank god.” I remarked as I recognized the man who bowed in the theater in a picture. He was leaning up against a wall looking off camera at something while flicking a cigarette away. It seemed to catch him in one of his non-pretentious moments, which I assume fill his waking hours. “I couldn’t imagine someone duller than a woman into economics.”She pouted for a moment and I added, “I half expected a poster of Greenspan tacked up somewhere.”

The lady blushed.

Hook and line

“I have a girlfriend.” I let the words hang there and waited for a reaction.

“Okay.” She said, her head shaking at my hesitation.

I took a deep breath before continuing. “Had a girlfriend,” I watched her for any change in mood but nothing happened. This girl was either very good or absolutely not interested. Was I losing my eye for observation or was this vixen merely toying with my fragile state. “We decided to take a break after some recent goings on.”

The girl didn’t wait a moment before asking, “You cheated on her?”

“What? No.” Did I come across this way to her, as an adulterer? Though my intentions for meeting Seattle weren’t clear to myself, I did know that I was in search for meaningful conversation and perhaps a friend who didn’t drop me off at clubs with a twenty pinned to my shirt.

The thought did begin to creep into my mind that perhaps this was her way of testing me. I thought to pry back, “How about you?” Not my best interrogation moment.

“I had one too.” My ears perked at the word, had. “So what did happen that she wanted a break?”

“Her family is a little crazy and mine isn’t wild about her.”

“Just families?” Her eyebrow arched and there was a tugging at the corner of her lips. She was playfully trying to work the truth out of me.

I couldn’t help but grinning like a fool. “No, I admit that I didn’t handle some situations the right way.” I leveled a finger at her and spoke through my dumb grin, “Don’t ask for specifics.” I imagined what it would be like to tell her about Bowie and the refrigerator or the roach and restaurant. My hand returned to the edge of the table and I settled back into my seat. “What about your boy situation?”

She giggled, “Boy indeed.” She composed herself. “He was a tad possessive and I let him go. Don’t inquire.” We sat silently for a moment reflecting on our damaged love lives. “Why can’t people just be normal, love each other and screw on a regular basis without extra strings.”

I choked on the soda that I had been drinking. Trying to alternate laughing and coughing while Seattle watched me was difficult. Eventually I managed to wheeze a gasp for air and did my best to expel the fluid from my lungs.

“Why does that always solicit the same reaction?” She asked with a laugh.

“Because,” I gasped, “You want it.”

She spoke slowly, deliberately. “I want it?”

“You know what I mean.” I coughed one last time, digging in and trying to release the last of the drink from my wind pipe.

“I do, but I’ve met all quality and variety of creep.”

I began moving the utensils around the table, positioning them in a variety of patterns. “There are a lot of crazy girls out there too.” I thought to myself that Rebecca was one of the few exceptions. “I’ve met women who could devour a man and others who were bound by no canvas jacket.”

“And I’ve met men who could set your hair on end with their vile excuse for hygienic habits. I’ve trod on the fetid lands of bathrooms unkempt and spied across the hills of cloths that time forgot.” We both crumbled into laughter. After a good bout of cheer we settled into a comfortable silence. There was warmth to the room that was probably more a lack of conditioned air but it made me feel good.

 Finding a moment of naked honesty and forgetting myself, I blurted, “It’s like being with an old friend.”

She blushed and with a sinister smile and wickedly coy hush to her voice asked, “An old friend?”

The force of my blood rushing from my body to fill the erection threatening to burst from my evening pants was dizzying. Suddenly my intentions were muddled and I forgot that this evening was not a date.

Cinema and abstract

The week went by with little fuss. I received a voicemail from my father that stated simply, “Templar Time.” I didn’t find out nor was I curious to what he meant by it and what he did. Rebecca never called me. I was sad and disappointed but not surprised. Her mom might still be in town. At least that’s what I told myself.

               The lack of drama or suspense in my week was much appreciated. It’s strange to thing that everything that happened occurred on the same day but sometimes when the world wants to throw you a curveball, it just keeps them coming.

               I did come to some strange form of understanding with my father’s situation. I can’t say I agree with the harder drug use but people drink for similar reasons and society accepts that. The confrontation did leave me a little shaken through the week. My personal issues with him aside that was an unpredictable and chaotic moment and those tend to unsettle me.

               As for Rebecca, I still wished I had heard her reasoning for our separation but the way I figure it, I would not like it or be better with it if I did know. I have my suspicions but they will go unverified until the next time we speak. As a last mention, I do miss her.

               With all these things in the back of my mind I found myself excited about the conscious meeting that I would be having with Seattle. Everything about her so far, which I admit is just short of nothing, whispers familiar and comfortable. That she contains within her the same wicked humor that allows me to get through a day serving people who purchase laxatives and anti-itch powders while not meeting my nonjudgmental eyes. That’s a lie. I play a game where I create the story in my head explaining the genesis of their ailment. Call it my gallows humor but on a consumer level.

               Apparently the movie I’m to see on Friday with Seattle is some little indie flick that will be premiered in a quiet little dark place with no more than a dozen or so in attendance. The name is ambiguous, Block. It doesn’t even give me anything to work with. The only flier I see for it displays a white background with a shadow cast by a white cube. So essentially it’s just a picture of a shadow.

               Aside from the vague cinema rendering we would witness, I felt excited. I also admit I felt a little self satisfaction that I was seeing a girl no more than a week after “taking a break”. Who knows, the evening might go very well.

The evening started horribly. Describing the plot or even what was occurring on screen as we sat in the dank, quiet, long forgotten corner of the world that just happened to have a projector and a large screen would have been impossible. There was a small cast of characters but I didn’t know if they were related, friends or actually all the same person. At one point two of them had sex but please don’t ask me which I just knew that I would need to take a cold shower and reaffirm my sexuality later with liberal amounts of computer time.

Towards the end of the movie, which occurred no less than one-hundred and forty minutes after we were seated, I witnessed a live birth. A slimy ball of hair poured forth from what had once been one of my favorite places. Poured is too lenient, it tore, like a mascot through a team banner at a football game, it tore. My feelings toward the female anatomy were altered there and then. There was nothing but respect and a bit of sympathy for the moment I witnessed. All in all though, I was greatly confused, scared and feeling a strange sensation in my feet, a need to run.

The few people who were in the cinema clapped. Someone turned around in front of me and bowed. Seattle clapped and smiled, turning to me, then back to the man basking in adulation. I wondered who this girl was and why I had thought that she could be more normal than it had turned out to be.

We stood outside and talked to the other movie goers for a while. I stood back with my hands stuffed into my pockets fingering my phone and wondering if I could call 911 without having to pull it out. The people were pleasant enough. They smiled and praised the movie for its cinematography and risqué themes. All I could remember about themes were color schemes and they were mostly red especially the sex scene and birth. I shook myself to unhinge those images.

Seattle bade them farewell and turned to me, the smile on her face gone. “Thank you for sitting through that.”

“What? That delightful piece of work? I haven’t been that entertained since A Clockwork Orange.” I said with a mock surprise. To myself I added that I understood Clockwork Orange better.

“They like to make art like that.” She watched me carefully, looking for something in my posture.

“If you didn’t enjoy it why did you come?”

She tilted her head, which allowed the mane of rust colored hair to fall to one side and looked up thoughtfully. “They’re friends. Who happen to be art majors and wildly inappropriate.”

I pushed a loose stone around on the floor. “So you’re an art major?”

She smiled. It seemed that she did that a lot. “Economics.”

I blanched and she laughed.

We went to dinner at an Applebee’s nearby. The hostess greeted us and bared her teeth at us in a mock display of happiness. She had some fish and I had a burger. For the first half of dinner she tried to explain the film to me. I couldn’t understand her explanation any better. Not that it was her fault. I found my thoughts floating back to Rebecca. She would never have taken me to see such a film. She knew my tastes and had a remarkable set of her own. Plus if something was crap, she’d say it, I’d mock it and we’d laugh. Deriving the worth of the film from its comedic failure to entertain.

Finally I told Seattle to stop trying to explain the film. An uncultured specimen as I was would gain nothing from a video of open weirdness.

“So then what do you do?”

“Me?” shoving a french fry into my mouth, “I work at a drug store catering to those who’s pelvic regions itch, sport infections and diseases that I gracefully get by without catching.”

“So you don’t go to college.” Her eyebrow was raised.

“Already did.”

“And?”

“And I got a degree.” Feeling strangely defensive, “What are you going to do with your economics?”

She sat back, and watched me eat. “Look I’m sorry you came to see that movie but you didn’t have to come. I just thought you were nice.”

I sighed and wiped the ketchup from the edges of my mouth. “I apologize. It has just been hard since graduating.”

She leaned forward again, “Personal problem hard?”

I nodded, “Among other things.”

“Tell me about them.”

I stared at her for a moment, studying the expressions in her face.

“Who am I going to tell?” She asked, “Plus if you feel that strongly afterwards, you can just disappear.”

 I thought for a moment. That feeling of something familiar demanded to be recognized. “Fine, but at the end you’ve got to fess up about yourself too.”

“We’ll see.” Was all she said.

Caffeine and serendipity

Everything felt so out of order. Within a few hours things had taken on new meaning. My dad had turned from a reserved aggressive and overly judgmental, domineering male figure into a doddering, drug fueled, sociopath intent on some unknown crusade. My longtime girlfriend, warped from her most recent maternal visit and the prior weeks of social and financial hardships decides that it is too much for her and that the way to alleviate it is through our parting of the ways.

“What the fuck!” I yell, slamming my palm into the wheel sparking protest from the car horn. Several nearby drivers look around expecting some wisp of an accident or car chase. Clenching my teeth doesn’t help alleviate the tension inside me, slamming the wheel didn’t either. I had thought at least that the steady growl and shouted explicative would make me feel better but they only filled the car with silence. The cauldron of emotions bubbling inside of me couldn’t be sorted or disturbed. It boiled and simmered rapidly leaving me angry one moment, forlorn the next and finally scared. It all left me vulnerable.

I pulled into the next hub of shops and parked. The sun was perched on the horizon watching me stroll across the asphalt. So much had happened and it was just the beginning of the weekend. The tiny voice that had guided me through most of the day chirped up a warning that troubles travel in threes. My attentions immediately shifted from the events of the day to the current situation.

I walked into a coffee shop and stood in line. I’ve never truly been to coffee shops, they seem to have a decent enough atmosphere and the people I know who attend are socially manageable if a little snooty. The patrons and ambiance become threatening under the foreboding of my third and final trial. Each customer could play a role in my cognitive and emotional undoing.

My gaze sets on a girl. “No.” I tell myself hoping for it to be an optical trick. The flash of her hair is like sooty copper under a burning sun, it flares as she becomes aware of someone’s notice and flicks her head this way and that.

“Sir your order.” The cashier commands.

I stride up the space I had not notice had opened and begin looking over the menu. All the while keeping the girl in my peripheral, I am assured that she will be the executor of the final transgression against me.

The vastness and quirky nomenclature of the menu overwhelms me. Scribbled on a chalk board in an array of colors and styles that beam friendliness and a welcoming embrace, it serves only to make me feel out of place.

Impatiently the cashier began tapping the counter with her index finger. I asked her for a small black coffee. She rolled her eyes and punched out a series of keys. I’m sure that there must’ve been some hip name to the coffee but I was in no clue to decipher the codex on the board behind her.

“Five thirty-five.” She read off to me.

I dug around my wallet for cash but was running empty. Grumbling about the price and mentioning that the coffee should provide me full service I handed the lady my credit card.  She swiped it and punched into a keypad.

A chill passed over me as I felt eyes lingering on my profile. The auburn hair had been replaced with a face that studied me. I kept myself facing the register even as I waited for the moment that she would click two and two together.

“Sir, it was declined.” The cashier didn’t look surprised.  She flipped the card back into my hand and waited with her fists lumped on hips.

“I don’t really have…” I began.

“Hey, I was wondering when you’d show up.” Seattle Blue sashayed up to me and planted a kiss on my cheek before dropping $5.50 on the counter and telling the girl to keep the change.

Seattle looped her arm around mine and guided me back to her table. I was speechless and probably had my mouth hanging open again. She planted me opposite her and then smiled from across the small table. “I remember you but not your name. All I know is that it’s also a city.” Her voice was softer than I remembered.

“Sidney.”

She nodded and closed her eyes. The images of that night replaying behind her eyelids. As she opened her eyes I noticed that they were a pretty brown. I had expected some exotic green but the brown was charming.

“You probably remember me.” She said her eyes meeting mine.

“You’re wicked.” I was grinning like a school boy. “Am I still supposed to call you Seattle?”

“You do remember.” Her cheeks went rosy.

“That was great up there by the way.”I said, indicating the counter.

               “Irksome people bother me. She gave me the same attitude.” She drummed her hands on the table and watched me. “So,” her eyebrows went up. I was missing the social cue.

               “Sorry, I’m not going to be as pleasant company.” I cleared my throat trying to prevent my voice from hiking as I said, “It hasn’t been a good day.”

               “Personal bad or things where you work?”

               I had barely spoken to this girl for more than fifteen minutes but something about her felt familiar and flowed. That being known I still said, “I’m sorry but I don’t know you well enough to say.” I didn’t want to ruin what was starting to feel like the only sane moment today. Something made me want to tell her but that feeling made me reel myself all the harder into a taught ball of introversion.

               She just smiled at me, “Personal then. I get it. You don’t even know my name.”

               “Seattle Blue has a nice flow to it.”

               Her eyes widened, “So you remember my whole fake name. I must have made an impression then.”

               This time I blushed, “Raucous orgies and pretty girls are not my usual so yes.” The hotness in my face subsided, “But you remembered me too, or else I would be trying to back out of paying for my coffee right now.”

               “You made me laugh a little. I went out to support a friend. Orgies are not my scene as well.”

               Was I flirting? Was it wrong for me to be flirting? Something inside me felt a tinge the traitor but most of this felt like a reprieve. My stomach was still in a knot with the echo of my father’s bellow and my heart was still barely beating with Rebecca’s decision.

               “Sorry that I’m not my comedic self. I’m just out of alignment.”

               “Things are that bad? No need to answer. Anyways it was nice to meet you once more.” She began putting her book back into her bag. I wanted to continue talking but couldn’t think of what. I truly knew nothing about this girl. The most I knew was that she liked coffee shops, reading and had distaste for public gatherings of indecency.

               Feeling like I was experiencing the third strike of the day I opened my mouth to protest. She stopped me with a look and put a card on the table.

               “Friday I’m going to see a movie. Should you find yourself available and curious to check it out this is my number.” She slipped me a small square of paper.

               I looked at the card. It had her phone number typed neatly in the center. I wondered if she gave these out regularly enough to print them. Who was I meeting and what was I looking to get into. Nothing else was printed on it. Perhaps it was a fake, but this was a strange way to give someone a fake number.

               She continued, “Consider this your mulligan. Now we’re even.” She smiled then, “Next time we meet it’ll be on purpose and make sure you bring you’re A game. Before you ask too, this is not me asking you out. You seem nice and I’m talking too much.”

               She slid from the chair and stood. With a flick of her hand, her hair was tossed back over her shoulder and she scooped up her trash.

               “What’s your name?” I asked.

               She watched me for a moment and I caught a glimmer of her conflicting thoughts of telling me. She settled on, “I don’t know you well enough.” With that she began walking away. As a final thought she said over her shoulder, “Be there Friday and we’ll start.”

               When the bell hanging above the door signaled her departure I began breathing again. This was wrong, something told me, Rebecca’s still around. The gloom that had vanished returned. Time to get back to my life.

               I almost left before realizing that the woman at the register had placed my coffee on the counter. If she called my name or tried to get my attention I had failed to notice. Grabbing the cool cup I grimaced and left the coffee shop sipping its cool contents.

Exodus and breaks

We sat for some undefined time while he told me about his experience. How glorious it had been and the mission he had received to pass on to me.  It was all about how evil women were and why men were dominant. I knew my dad had some tendencies toward chauvinism but whatever he was on amplified and defined the edges to his ideology.

The center of his argument was around his girlfriend Catherine. From what I could gather and what common sense told me, she put some distance between herself and him. This was no doubt due to his drug use but then again I didn’t know how long it had been going on. When he did try to speak to her, she denied him. Apparently this sent him into some paranoid delusion about her turning on him. Betrayal was a big theme for my father.

After telling me what I could only imagine was his version of the gospel, he swore me to secrecy. “This is God’s plan for us. It is not to be shared with the uninitiated.” I didn’t and couldn’t understand the need for swearing me to silence. I was petrified at this point, like a child I sat and listened, nodding fearfully to each phrase that fell from his tongue. All the fear I had once held for my father gripped me and threatened to suffocate.

We sat in silence for some time after. He watched the ceiling, thinking. I tried to figure out how to take control of the situation, how to escape it. This segment stretched as long as the one where he had preached. Only this one was scarier because I couldn’t see the wheels turning or where they would go.

If God had truly given my father a plan, I begged him now to give me safe passage from this place. I’m not religious in any sense, nor am I spiritual. In this instance though I needed some form of omnipotent power to guide me the fuck out of this house.

My father laughed, the corners of his mouth climbing his face and squeezing his glazed almond eyes. A tremor ran through me. “You know what we’re going to do.” I kept silent in case it wasn’t a question, “Whenever Cathy is around I’m going to say it’s templar time.” The squinted eyes climbed down from the roof to look at me, “And we’re going to have fun.” The final words were said with a wicked vagueness.

A shrill sound cut through the silent words he had left unsaid with that grin he now wore. My phone had answered my dire prayer. “Hello?” The phone had practically materialized at my ear. That psychotic smile reappeared across my father’s face as he let his head fall back and his eyes turn skyward. I wondered if he was speaking to God.

“What? Hi.” Rebecca was on the phone. Whatever dread I would have felt at this was vastly and immeasurably outweighed by my current condition.

“Hey hon.”

My father’s eyebrow arched while he continued his communion with whatever was in his blood or beyond the roof.

“Can we talk?”

“You need to talk? Yeah I’m just at my dad’s house.” My nerves were revving my voice into an unflattering pitch. I quickly worked to control it.

“Are you alright?”

“I’ll be over in a second, let me just say goodbye.”

“Sid?”

I hung up the phone. Apologies and explanations would come far easier than terrified fleeing.

“You got to go.” He almost sounded disappointed in me. His eyes still turned skyward.

“Yeah.”

I rose from my seat. A hand clutched the back of the chair to steady my weak legs. With full concentration I strode slowly to the door.

“What are we?” The whisper came from behind me, I dared not turn around.

“Knights.” I took a step forward.

“What are we?” More urgently this time.

“Knights.” My knees shook, threatening to plunge me to the floor.

The bellow came once more, it threatened to drop me to my knees and rend my mind leaving me weeping on the cloudy grey tile. “What are we?”

“Knights.” I barely made my body obey.

As I shut the door I took one last look back and saw him staring at me. His mouth curled, “Good.”

* * * * *

I didn’t stop to collect myself until I was in the parking lot for Rebecca’s complex. When I cut the engine’s power my hand lost its composure and shook relentlessly. My stomach drew into itself and tried to regurgitate what little I had eaten that day. There was water in my eyes and it stung. I wanted to lie on my side and cry softly into my knees. Everything felt wrong and dirty. The world was suddenly a lot more oppressive and intimidating than it had been in the last few months.

I opened the door and stepped out of the car. My footsteps were uncertain and my body felt like it had forgotten how to act. It moved in ways that looked like a caricature of me. I tried to put my father’s degenerating state out of my head but it kept making its way back in. What drugs was he doing, how long and why now? Mostly I wanted to forget how he made me feel. I’d learned to be firm around him and it all went to hell the moment I caught sight of those eyes.

As I grew closer to Rebecca’s apartment I began to understand that I was losing my father to something sinister. His past, his faults and all the years of abuse from his father had taken root and were beginning to bloom, a violet germanium of despair.

I knocked on the door and pushed the event with my father from my mind. Rebecca had sounded serious over the phone. That and she had given me the signal for troublesome talks. Like a puppet suddenly yanked up by his strings my body lifted. I didn’t want to be here right now and especially for this. There was no way I’d do it like a beaten pup.

When Rebecca answered the door she was solemn. Upon seeing me something in her flickered for a moment: sympathy, concern and affection. Each disappeared the moment after they had appeared, behind the blink of her eyes. “What happened?” was my consolation prize. My heart and face hardened into stone.

“Nothing.” I stepped into the apartment looked around expecting the witch to come soaring in on her broom. Agatha didn’t show.

She closed the door behind me and sat down on the couch. “Sit.” Though I heard it as a command, she was trying to hold herself together from something too. The soft contours to her body beckoned me to sit near her. I wanted to stubbornly pull up a chair and set the mood properly. I chose the lesser of the two and seated myself beside her.

No jokes sprung to my mind, nothing to ease what was going to be a tense situation. I’d already dealt with a great shock. Whatever relationship turmoil we were about to trudge through would be a cake walk by comparison.. “All on the same day too.” I said aloud.

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing.”

Her lips moved and twitched as though the words fought from behind her luscious lips to be freed. Another day and I would have imagined the hundreds of combinations she would utter. My pessimistic imagination would draft thousands of replies to each of her statements. Today I sat and waited while she worked up her nerve. “We need to take a break.” Her body quivered with the completion of the sentence.

Some part of me laughed. The rest of me shook its head like a disappointed parent discovering a household treasure smashed. Their child blathering excuses as the adult is beyond belief that their day of labor and toil would end with on this note.

 “That’s all?” I asked.

Her eyebrows furrowed out of confusion. “What?” I supposed she had expected a different reaction. I just wasn’t feeling like myself today.

I got up and began walking to the door.

“What is wrong with you?” The words were accusatory and a bit fearful. “What happened to you today?” Her words were losing the formality she had built up. She was coming down from her pedestal.

“Nothing.”

As I grabbed the knob she was at my side and grabbed my shoulder. “Talk to me.”

I wanted to scream hateful things. To yell, threaten and pour my frustration and anger out into a smoldering pile of putrid waste. Leave her sobbing to herself and affirm her need to be away from me. Assure her that I was a monster and villain.

I wanted to fall to the floor and lose control. Cry large sobbing tears into my arms. Have her wrap her arms around me and hold me until the trembling stopped and I found my voice once more. Tell her about what happened, try to explain and understand it all.

I wanted to fight to keep her. Tell her that we were stronger than all of this. We were worth so much more than anything I had and anything I would ever own. Tell her that I loved her.

“No.”

I opened the door and walked away.

Hopes and weakness

The house was messier than I remembered it being. The lights were dimmer than I remembered and the tile floor was clouded. Small streams of light beamed through slits in the blinds like cracks in a wall. It was as though he were reworking the place to resemble a modern cave.

On the living room table were scraps of metal spread around and containing some form of order, like a beast dissected and observed. Paper had been laid beneath each pile and tools sat nearby prepared to work. My father moved around touching this and that as though he were tidying up but only coming across as though he suffered from a compulsive disorder.

The shirt he wore hung baggy on him. I’d always pictured him being more fit. It dawned on me that perhaps I’d taken his age for granted. Something about it all didn’t feel like dementia and something began to scratch at the back of my mind.

“Sorry I’ve had nothing to do lately so I’ve worked on,” He continued to touch and move things. He was striving for some optimal global orientation, “projects.”

I looked around and folded my arms, “So what’s the problem.”

“Catherine…” The word was a hiss. It took me a few moments to recall that this was the name for his girlfriend, the mediator and polite socialite. His eyes turned back on me and the hairs on my neck began to rise. “You didn’t bring the girl with you.”

“Didn’t figure she needed to be here.” While mostly true, I hadn’t wanted to ask Rebecca along fearing that I might worsen our already tenuous relationship.

“Good.” He mumbled, “I’ve had a realization. One of those epiphanies.” This was the most talkative he’d been with me in years. Something inside me smiled at the thought of us conversing while the itching in my brain continued to nag at me. My arms unfolded and I sat on one of the chairs while he organized his thoughts. “Nothing matters.” He finally said.

While the idea was a little broad I began to think that perhaps he’d had a change of heart. Maybe something happened to change his mind about the whole thing.

“No one matters.”

This could be the beginning to repairing our relationship. I was skipping ahead of the whole process a bit quickly but a moment required seizing while ripe.

“It’s down to you and me.”

He was doing it. Realizing the true value he held in his son.

“Really you’re all that I have left.”

My heart swelled and the infernal grating in my brain screamed alarm.

His eyes turned up to me and everything I’d built up in the last few moments came crashing down.

The eyes were filled with madness. They glared wide, encased in a glassy layer, straight through me. All of my bravado and courage that I had collected in the car turned to ash. I felt the same as I had in the bird woman’s house. I was ten again and in terrible fear of the man before me.

“Catherine is wicked Sidney. She tricks and manipulates me into being someone I’m not.” I couldn’t understand that statement. He’d been the same person the whole relationship. “We are knights, Sidney. In service to God. For our works we will be rewarded with all that we please.” He paused to watch me. I was frozen and helpless. “What are we son?” he whispered.

My throat was dry but I managed a squeaking voice, “Knights.”

“What are we?” He asked again.

I had to swallow before speaking again, “Knights.”

“What are we?” He yelled.

A tremble worked its way into my body, “Knights.”

He began to bellow again but the voice that came out made my blood go cold. “What are we?”

“Knights.” I wanted to cry as I had when I was young but afraid that he would grow angry.

“That’s right.” An insane smile taking his face, “You can have anything you want as long as we are together working against it all.” He stopped for a moment to think of a way to convince me. “You like that girl you’re with?”

I made a tiny sound.

He clapped his hands and sent my heart racing. “You can have all the black, brown or blue girls you want.”

What small scrap of me that was left screamed from within my skull, “What the fuck is going on?” That small piece started working on an escape plan while trying to understand what drove him to this.

“Son, you know that Moses spoke to a burning bush to speak to God.”

I made a tiny sound.

“Cannabis.”

My inner self perked up at this and thought to remember everyone who’d gotten high near me. None had acted this delusional or fanatical.

“Science has given us many new ways to speak to him.”

Instead of a sound, I gathered a little strength to ask him a question, “How long?”

He looked at me sideways like an animal would when studying something strange and intriguing. “Only recently.”

I wondered if he meant since I’d last seen him or in relation to how long he’d been on this planet. All I knew was that I had to get out.

“I’ve spent the last few days toying with Catherine, trying to get her to break. She’s crafty and wicked.” He laughed loudly and suddenly. “You should see how she reacts, as though I’m the crazy one.” His face went dark as quickly and violently as the laugh had come, “Just like my father.” He snapped from it and looked dead at me, “But we will fight it because we are…”

“Knights.” I squeaked.

“What are we?”

“Knights.” My voice wavered.

He bellowed once more, “What are we?”

“Knights.” I’d never felt so weak and alone.

“That’s right.”

Dinner and Family

I pulled up to my father’s house and began preparing myself. Slow breaths, flexing the fingers and spinning my wrists. Each and every joint needed to be loose for this and my mind would have to be prepared to flow. I did the best impression of quick meditation that I could think of. Pulling from movies, books and a relaxation tape Rebecca’s mother had gifted her.

The last time I had come down and visited it had been with Rebecca. An introduction was long overdue and she was anxious to meet my father. I had spent years telling stories from my youth to either prepare or discourage her from the trip but we had made it. I remember her smiling and kissing me then springing from the car and looking back to see if I was coming along.

Maybe it was revenge for meeting her parents a year before and dodging the reciprocal visit. Maybe she was genuinely happy to meet one of the being who had sired me. Maybe she was just easing my obvious and overwhelming dread.

She held my hand on the way to the door. I knocked loudly and made peace with God. She squeezed my hand and smiled at me, her eye lashes swishing softly, and whispered that everything would be okay. I smiled and turned my attention back to the door but I held the image of her face in my mind.

The visit went over like spoiled milk. It had seemed pleasant enough at first glance, words and compliments exchanged with little depth or motive. Then things turned sour. Nothing visible but you could smell it in the air.

My father’s girlfriend attended the evening and spoke whenever the room would fall silent. Rebecca sat next to me and held my hand. She spoke softly and respectfully, most of the questions were handled with concise statements that didn’t lead to anything. My father and I sat silent. I sat mutely following the spacing between the tiles and he watched the conversation between his woman and mine as though it were a polite tennis match.

By the end of the peace talks and everyone had run out of polite statements and small talk questions we descended into eating. With food there is a loosening of boundries with my family so it took three forkfuls to draw the first question from my father.

“So what do your parents do?”

Dishes clattered with the impact of knives and forks. Dull thuds rumbled through the table with the removal and replacement of cups. There was no long silence between his question and the answer but each of us felt the passage of time.

Rebecca wiped her mouth and replaced her napkin in her lap. Residual manners from her mother but they did not go unnoticed. Each pair of eyes followed the fold of paper from lap to lip and back to lap.

“My mother is in mortgages and my father’s an English teacher.”

A sliver of meat hung from my father’s fork and he grunted, “Uh huh, and where did they meet?” He placed the chunk between his teeth and chewed slowly savoring and waiting to swallow.

“I think the story goes that they met through a mutual friend, dated and married.”

“Still married?” He spoke while still chewing.

“No.”

We ate for a few minutes without another word. Rebecca was concentrating on her food. I pushed against her leg with my foot and threw her a smile. At that my father piped back in.

“Are both your parents brown skinned or is one of them…” He let the phrase hang. Each bone in my body had locked in place.

Rebecca responded to this question the same way she had when asked what her major was in school, “My father is black and my mother white.”

My teeth clenched and I waited.

“You must take a lot after your mother, your skin is so light.” My father’s girlfriend swung in trying to suffocate the embers that had begun to glow around the table.

I had not been raised to harbor ill thoughts about color or religion, nor had Rebecca. When we met I had thought her a beautiful creature, her tan brown skin and dark obsidian hair. Never before had a girl of color caught my eyes but she had taken my breath with them. I knew that my family would have its issues, most were polite and said nothing. My happiness was enough to quell their misgivings. My father raised me to be open minded but quietly I imagine he tried to instill a reluctance to date openly.

So there we sat at the table, my father, his woman and I plus my token mulatto girlfriend.

“I didn’t know my son liked dark skinned girls.” My father said.

It took a great deal of force to keep my tone steady and to drop the knife in my hand. “I didn’t know we were discussing my tastes.”

He regarded me for a moment and didn’t speak further. The volatility of the discussion subsided and dinner ended soon after with some tension left unresolved.

My father and I ended up in a room talking very sternly to one another while the women sat in the living room awkwardly waiting for the groans of a distant argument to subside.

When we left I had never felt angrier. Rebecca grabbed my thigh as I drove. She had been strong throughout the whole evening and been respectful. I couldn’t ask for a better person to have come home with me. At a red light I kissed her and apologized. She pulled me back and kissed me again. She whispered that it was over now. My response was to smile back weakly but I couldn’t get to where she was. The disapproval from people on the streets was one thing but I hadn’t expected so much from my family.

Since then I hadn’t spoken much with my old man. He’d been too stubborn and I had been too upset over the whole thing.

Now I sat in his driveway about to see him and I didn’t know what to expect.

I walked up to the door and knocked. The face of Rebecca smiling floated into my mind.

He answered the door in his reading glasses. Something about the width of his eyes seemed wild. His hair had thinned more and he’d cut it recently. It hung in mass at his temples and behind his head but allowed a hazy view of his scalp from above. His skin was also a little baggier than I had last seen and more yellow. He did not look well.

“Sidney, come in.” 

Friends and thoughts

I took a few minutes to lock away the scene that had just played out, something in my chest jumped at the fleeting memory of it. Taking a few deep breaths and grinning to the bored and unhappy bouncer I reentered the club.

A side of me hoped to see her again inside. Some passing glances to share or perhaps just to view her dancing, the way she would sway. There was a tinge of disgust in myself for wanting to see her as part of the writing mass but I found that I could quickly come to peace with that. Sadly my vigilant hunt yielded no game. Only the simple prey scampering and hiding here and there were found.

The evening ended with Hank texting my phone, the vibrations being the first thing I felt in that latter half of the evening aside from the pounding on my eardrums. “Outside now” it read. The crowd was thinning and didn’t offer me much resistance as I weaved my way out. Hank was pulled up on the side of the road, the passenger door facing me and his smirk filling the window.

“Have fun?” he asked as I climbed in.

Fastening my seatbelt and quickly looking up to let him catch the glint that I was trying to show in my eye. “Indeed.”

His smirk faded quickly. “You actually met someone.”

I was too happy to care how flat he said it or how concerned his face had shifted into.

“You met a girl you,” he searched the air for a word, “enjoyed?”

“Is that so hard to believe?” my smile could have been wider but that would be physiologically improbable.

“It's not that,” He was interrupted by a tap on the window. A meaty bouncer with a shaved head, how typical, was giving him the “get the fuck out of here” look. He shifted into gear and started off. “You met a girl you wanted to bang, talk shit with or laugh after sex with.”

“Surprising, I’d think you would’ve just called it fucked or fucking.” He was beginning to irritate me so I snapped back a little harder than I should have.

“First of all, shove it up your ass. Secondly, the definition of what you want is very important here.” The jovial look he typically had on his face would have been acceptable but that he was coming down on me the way my mother or father would was really burning my patience. On top of it all, the fact that he was doing so after I spent so long watching him please his hedonistic side night after night without my disapproval for his decisions.

“I met a girl and had a miserable time having my ears beaten to a shadow of their former selves.”

“You just don’t get it.”

“You just wanted to enjoy watching me fail night after night and go crawling back to Rebecca.”

“See you’re almost right. I just wanted you going back to her in the end cause she seems good for you. Or am I wrong?”

“You’re not but what does that have to do with meeting a girl.”

“Depends on if you want to fuck her or not.” He cussed with extra emphasis, splashing me with his spit on the hard k.

“Because I might cheat on Rebecca with this new girl?” Not that I hadn’t imagined it. I’m just too much of a coward to act on any of it.

“Almost, if it was just sex it could easily never have happened. If you were dumb enough to actually like her and deal with it the wrong way you’d be committing emotional adultery.”

 The orange street lights blinked past the car, each one bathing us in its glow for moments before shadows climbed over our faces escaping the following bulb’s light. Most of the night was gone and with it went the majority of motorists. We drove alone on the streets, our car’s lonely pilgrimage down roads that would be filled with anxious and desperate drivers within several hours.

The words clung to my mind. They were not foreign to me though that they streamed from Hank’s mouth was a bit of wonder. It had occurred to me that I would or did feel this way about the girl but no one know how anything is going to transpire.

               I sighed and admitted the single detail that would result in my defeat, “I never got a number.”

               Hank didn’t laugh. I would thank him for that if he hadn’t made me spoil what had been an interesting evening. “No name either?” The man was being thorough.

               “Not a real one.”

               The sound of the motor humming filled the air along with the gentle whoosh of each lamppost that we past. I traced the edge of the armrest and kept my sight on the road ahead of us. Had the radio been on this silence would be more bearable.

               “Sorry, it just needs to be this way.”

* * * * *

               Each day at work I found myself thinking of Rebecca and Seattle Blue alternatively. With each came a different rush of emotion.

Rebecca would fill me with a sense of peace and some aggression. The softness of her smile and the joy of her laugh made me miss her. But these thoughts always ended with scenes from dinner, from each of the glares that she’d given me and then that tearful and determined last image I had of her face. When I thought of her, I considered calling and checking in at least twice before deciding that not enough time had passed.

Seattle made me feel like I was in high school again. That floating feeling you get when someone you have a warm and sudden affection for provides you with a taste of their attention. The added bonus that she was funny and playful, not to mention sexy. At the thought of her being sexy a wave of guilt would rush over me, followed quickly by a rush of excitement for something new and forbidden. I will admit to being a man who has lived little.

So it went that I would spend each day at work thinking of these two girls. But with time passing the prospects of speaking to each again dimmed. Seattle more than Rebecca but each pulled away from me just the same.

By the first weekend after meeting Seattle I received a phone call that I eagerly snatched up in hopes that it would be an unknown number or possibly Rebecca.

Instead it was my father who I hadn’t spoken to since the last argument we’d had and left on bad terms. Rebecca had been there and for all the grief I give her over her family, each time something happens, mine surprises and makes me ashamed for ever pointing a finger.

“Hey dad.” I try to sound as detached as possible.

“Son.” He pauses for a moment and with a deep breath continues, “Things aren’t going well.”

Gyrating and wit

A week passed quietly by as I tried to live as comfortable as possible. At hank’s insistence, I spent several evenings in his company as we strolled through the lively strip of bars and clubs like a couple of lost pups. We stopped into a few but generally he behaved himself in the first week. He allowed me to get out of the house but didn’t force me into a position where I’d have to find my own way home while he slipped his tongue down some girl’s throat.

The second week was not as docile. Hank began returning to his hound dog ways and I stood by, a witness to debauchery and lewdness. What girls did come my way were sent away by my grim expression and tone, the social pariah that I was channeling allowing me spare room to sit in observation.

By the end of the second week Hank decided it was time to let me “roam on my own” and turned me loose at the entrance to a club where he’d found the most satisfying prey. That he “cut me loose” was humorous considering the whole week’s worth of women he left me behind to woo. Each time he returned to water his wall flower with a glass of dark liquor. I would nurse these gifts until his eventual return. With a swift grab the glass would disappear from my grasp and slip down his gullet. Every night ended with him laying face up in the back seat as I drove his car home.

               This night he dropped me off and vanished from sight. I paid the ten dollar cover charge and walked in. The music that sounded like tribal drumming from the outside turned out to be a thunderous roar of pop music that denied the other senses their turn. Sticking my finger in one ear and reducing the booming world to half a dull thud I regained the use of my other senses.

               The room smelled like a gym sock that had been urinated on mixed with a flare of spicy wing sauce. Each step of mine was peeled from the floor boards as the residue clung to me like a nagging child wailing and clutching as I escaped its feral need. My eyes watched lights dance off the walls, shimmering then casting themselves upon the bodies writhing on the floor. Each a dark silhouette against a colorful and psychedelic backdrop. Each person moved like an amorphous blob, their limbs struggling for a sense of balance and place. They moved against each other in attempts to merge blob forms and create a unified super blob but with little success. I watched for a few moments before concluding that I would not be joining the pulsating mass regardless how proximate the women needed to be to the men near them. I wondered if any of them were inside each other and not only in the sexual sense.

               I unplugged my ear and descended back into sensory deprivation. This would become a physical trial of sorts. The endurance of my body would be tested against the ethanol fueled youth that pervaded this establishment.

               Before ten minutes were up I found myself rushing out the back door of the place where the smokers retreated to draw deeply of other fumes before climbing back into the sonic womb. My ears physically hurt and drummed with blood rushing back to replace the space left by a deep and invasive bass line.

               I pinched my nose and tried to pop my ears. Sadly the pressure that had built up was completely sound related and so I stood looking like a boy about to beat his breath holding record.

               “How muffled do I sound?”

               The voice was feminine and contained withheld mirth. Turning I met its source. A lovely tall auburn haired woman with pretty eyes and a wide smile still holding back laughter.

               “There’s a slight ringing but I can hear you fine.”

               She smirked and tilted her head up inquisitively, “How long were you in there for?”

               “Oh I don’t know, five maybe ten minutes.”

               “Was it the oppressive altar to pop music or the orgy of chafing and mass dry humping?”

               A wicked smile snaked onto my face. “I was getting a stink eye from the gonorrhea and syphilis sitting in the corner booth.”

               “As long as some herpetic beast didn’t grind its blistered mass against you, which would be unfortunate.”

                “Did a phallus try to stiffly offer you some drinks?”

               “With the amount of alcohol in their veins I’d be surprised if their dicks didn’t catch fire when they beat off to the girls that didn’t come home.”

                I became conscious of my mouth hanging open for the first time and snapped it shut. “Sidney,” I began.

               “Seattle.” She stated before I could finish my greeting.

               Confused I paused for a moment and considered the oddness of the name. “I haven’t met someone so ruthless yet.”

               She smiled and laughed a bit, probably at something I didn’t know or understand. “Not normally but I haven’t really enjoyed the venue, plus you kept raising the bar.” She thought for a moment then stated, “Blue.”

               The strangeness of the manner which she ended the sentence intrigued a quirky side of me. “Green.” Then I continued, “Why are you here then?”

               Several moments passed then she raised an eyebrow and shook her head at me as though my sentence were incomplete. “Going to take your turn or are you passing?”

               “My turn at what?”

               She tilted back as though I had surprised her. Whatever turn I was taking or passing on was lost on me. “We’re not naming favorite things then?”

               “When did that start?”

               She squinted slightly, studying me. “When you said Sidney. Like a favorite city.”

               A laugh tore out of my mouth before I could prevent its escape. I worried that I had offended her but she stood in good humor.

               She began nodding to herself, “Sidney’s your name.” her teeth flashed in another smile.

I became aware of how pretty she was suddenly, the laugh breaking me from the trance of conversation. She wore a grey jacket over a strapless top the color of a swimming pool with a texture to match a small wake in the waters. The top of her moderate bust was revealed, sprinkled with a collection of freckles. She wore tight jeans that hugged her thighs snugly. She looked partially dressed for comfort and somewhat dressed for looks. That she wasn’t wearing a skirt or pants so tight that they showcased her claim to female anatomy garnered some respect.

               “Indeed it is.” I felt my cheeks heat at this. It had been some time since I’d blushed.

               “Thank you for the banter and awkward moment Sidney.” She smiled one more time and began walking inside.

               “Returning to the altar?”

               She turned and regarded me for a moment, something kept close in those eyes. “Leaving, I allow myself one embarrassing moment.”

               Something inside me told me to let her go away but I ignored it and persisted. “Only the one?”

               She laughed softly and shook her head as though I’d done something unbelievable and, I hoped, cute. “If I see you again.” She stood for a moment awaiting another question. I thought of many but settled on one more.

               “What’s your name then?”

               Mischievously she answered, “Seattle Blue.” Swinging her purse to and fro.

               I released the hold on her by waving and saying, “Goodnight Seattle Blue.”

               She took a deep breath and gazed at me from far behind those kind eyes and replied as softly as she had started it all, “Goodnight Sidney Green.” 

Friends and lagomorphs

“You called her a bitch? That was fucking dumb.”

Stranded at the Cheesecake parking lot I called Hank to pick me up. We now sat in the car, me weaving the tale and him critiquing it.

“It’s just been building up I guess.” I was pinching and massaging the bridge of my nose trying to undo the headache that was breaking ground in my skull.

Hank silently drove on.

“Just all this shit with her family and mine plus the money.” I trailed off.

Hank grinned knowingly and switched hands on the wheel.

“You can blow me.”

He looked over at me with his grin smeared from ear to ear. “Ten minutes you’ve been in the car and you haven’t made one dumb ass joke.”

I rolled my eyes and stared out the window, “I get serious when I get stressed.”

“No amigo, you get serious when you deal with people you don’t like. I’ve said this shit to you before so we’ll see if it sticks this time.”

I watched a family pull up in a burgundy van beside us. The father wore a bristly moustache and seemed ready to leap screaming from his car. The children sat in the back of the van flailing limbs and glowing under the glow of the headrest video set. Their mouths hung open and I could just imagine the sounds they produced.

“Are you going to call her?”

That man looked like he wanted nothing to do with the world he lived in.

“Eventually.”

“Is her mom staying with her?”

The light turned green and the van sped away, the father must be desperate to get home.

“I don’t think so. Rebecca’s place isn’t very comforting for Lady Agatha. Not to mention she’d probably kill her mom before the night is out.” I knew she wouldn’t though.

“So what do you want to do now?” Hank’s voice carried mischief.

“Nothing that doesn’t include me sleeping for work tomorrow.”

We drove for a while in silence. Hank’s mystery offer sounded enticing after a botched dinner but I wasn’t interested in watching him talk to girls. I was in no mood to play wallflower to his social slut.

He dropped me off at my car just outside of Rebecca’s place. Before he pulled away he rolled down the window and gave me a serious look and commanding finger wag. “Don’t do anything else dumb tonight.”

I looked at him and raised an eyebrow. My keys were already in my hands and jingling.

“You know exactly what I’m talking about Sid. Call me tomorrow after work, you could use company.”

“I’ve got Sam.”

“Yeah. Call me tomorrow.” With that he accelerated hard and disappeared around the corner the sound of his muffler echoed its loud hum for a minute more before also vanishing into the night.

I looked at my car and tossed the keys from hand to hand. My feet turned and took me instead to where I didn’t want to go.

Rebecca answered the door slowly. From the dim light of the hall I could see her eyes were bleary and red with the remainder of the evening written in them.

“What.” Her voice was like grating stones and her lips quivered. I must have just caught her in the middle of it.

“I wanted to apologize.”

Her strength slowly gathered. “Okay.” She stood there, her body remembering itself and straightening.

“I’m sorry.” This wasn’t what I had planned to say but it came out naturally.

“Me too.”

That response I had not expected. “Come again?”

Her jaw clenched and she said nothing.

“Anyways I wanted to see if you were alright.” My hands were alternating being inside my pockets and being against my hip. It felt like I was asking her out for the first time again.

“I’m fine.” I wondered why she had to be so strong and brutal with me and me alone but didn’t voice the question.

My feet rocked back and forth as my mind searched for something else to say or do. Kissing was out of the question, maybe a hug. Should I ask to come in, walk away. My hand wanted desperately to touch hers but kept its fidgety self at my side.

“Go home.” Her voice was so flat when she said it. The marks on her face from her tears were gone. She had willed them away. She wanted to will me away.

A moment passed where I just stood watching her, my hands and feet had stopped their anxious idling. She was a marvel to me and so frustrating. Words and phrases streamed before my eyes like a teleprompter but I didn’t find the voice to air them. I wanted to be a lot of things at that moment but all I could do was walk away.

The door clicked closed behind me and I didn’t break my retreat. Each step was surprisingly easier as though I’d walked away from what could have been a hard situation.

“A hard situation.” I muttered. Every hard situation I had faced before and yet each one that dealt with us I found myself either whimpering away with my tail between my legs or just throwing my hands up in defeat.

As I sat in my car, I allowed a moment of quiet to pass before starting the engine. The creaking of the night with its ambient noises was so peaceful. Cold air had taken refuge in the cab so I found myself shivering as I turned the key. My phone vibrated in my pocket and I considered not looking at it. Images of Rebecca sniffing while on the phone sent my hand into the pocket to retrieve the device.

“You’re a fucking idiot.” Was all that it said. The message was from Hank.

I banged my head once into the headrest and put the car into reverse. In the best Impersonation my car can do, I stormed out like I had seen Hank do minutes before.

* * * * *

I opened the door with a push, allowing it to swing slowly before tapping the wall. The air was warm inside and the noise of the bedroom fan tapping back and forth was audible from the front. Small thumps came from just inside. Sam was awake and looking for me.

Closing the door and doffing my shoes I walked over to Sam’s enclosure. She stood on her back legs and stared up at me. Her long ears hung down over her back like straight hair and her nose twitched furiously. Her white face watched me curious and expectantly.

There was a box nearby her cage where I hold all of her food and treats. I dug around for a piece of parsley and handed it to her. Tearing it from my grasp she hunched over and chewed furiously, devouring the long stem like a piece of spaghetti.

Sam is my Lop eared rabbit. I acquired her when I was in college while she was a kit, raised and trained her. The soft white and brown spotted fur that keeps her warm provides me with a place to rest my hand. Of course I do this at her insistence. She does love to be pet.

As she eats I open the door for the enclosure. Then I walk to the kitchen to get a glass of water before I collapse on my futon and think about the evening one more time before bed.

Sam finishes the parsley and sniffs the rim of the doorway. She hops our and shakes her body. Probably loosening up before scampering around my living room like a wild beast. The sight of her moving quickly along the rug conjures the scene at the restaurant.

With the glass of water in hand and the evening freshly restored to the fore of my mind I toss my body limply into the couch. The glass is cool so I press it to my temple. The headache that had begun surfacing before remained a constant, although dim, presence in my head.

Sam wheeled around the room before standing before the futon. Standing on her hind legs she gazed up at me. The gaze may be intended for my hand actually. With a pat to the cushion, she jumps up and sits beside me. My hand returns to my lap and my eyes close. If only I could will this headache away the way Rebecca probably could.

There’s a grunt as a head prods at my palm. Sam is attempting to draw some affection from me no doubt. Absently my hand strokes her slowly, grabbing the long ears on their way down her back. After several passes her body lowers.

I open my eyes to see her lying beside me, her head resting on the cushion, her back feet thrown out to the side. A smile curls from my lips.

Returning to my thoughts I go over the night in my head again. From the hostile meeting to the hide and go seek of the menus to the dinner itself. I try to hold the scenes of us three at the table in my mind’s eye. It’s difficult considering the overwhelming amount of distraction about to occur. I can hear Agatha’s words clear as day, the malice in them as she whispered loudly to Rebecca. With my keen sense of hindsight I can tell that she was goading me into a confrontation.

“It happens the same way each time.” I tell Sam, “She speaks through the serpents in her hair. She draws you, enrages you to look upon her. As your eyes meet hers you learn in that moment that she has you. And poof! Petrifaction.”

Sam’s ears tilt forward at poof.

“I just reacted too quickly this time, too harshly.”

Sam’s nose twitched slowly.

“Last time was about the same, minus bitch.” I took a deep breath before continuing to complain to my rabbit, “She pushed me into starting the fight then played victim and unleashed a flurry of verbal blows. Then Rebecca and I fought on the way home and saw each other the next day and apologized for rudeness and family.”

Sam began to lick the cushion sheet.

“Not this time. I may have crossed the line this time with that bitch thing. At least I think that’s what it was.” I thought about it for a moment, “But she’s called her mom a bitch before. In front of me once.” Another pensive second passed, “Maybe it’s because I did it? But that woman has eaten whole babies, sucking down the umbilical cord and slurping the placenta. It is the method she uses to stay so youthful looking. By absorbing their lack of age.”

I laughed at the visual of her consuming a child then noticed Sam beginning to chew the sheet. Pushing her bottom I made a hissing sound that sent her bouncing from the futon.