Dirty Eden

by J. A. Redmerski

  I slowly looked back into the mirror again. At first, I saw only my reflection, realizing how difficult it was to notice anything else with all the looking at myself and, frankly, admiring what I saw even with the overgrowth. But I managed to tear my eyes away and see what was behind me in the glass.

  Why didn’t I notice that before! I punched the air with my fist.

  The view behind me was nothing at all like the view where I was standing. My eyes widened with disbelief and amazement.

  “What do you see, Norman?” said Tsaeb stepping up. “Obviously you see something, now out with it.”

  I looked away from the mirror to see behind me, to compare, to make sure.

  “I see Kate,” I answered slowly, peering back into the mirror again. “She’s working behind the counter.”

  “Eh?” Tsaeb’s face wrinkled with confusion.

  “Ah, so you see a place you already know,” said Taurus.

  “Yeah, but how am I supposed to go there, and why would I need to go there?”

  “Which way do you usually go to get there?”

  “What does that matter?” I let my arm fall to the side, the mirror still clutched in my hand. Before letting Taurus answer, I did so for him, sarcastically. “I step out of my apartment door like this.” I walked as if actually stepping out of my apartment, “and then after I leave the building, I take a right and head toward the first stop light.” I walked a little farther and then stopped. “Now what does this have to do with anything?”

  “You ask too many questions. Why don’t you just keep walking?” Taurus suggested.

  I began to understand, but thought it was all just ridiculous. I continued to walk, half imagining that I was really walking to Lou’s Coffee, taking lefts and rights and even going around the big curve at the end of the street near the park. I talked all the way, still making sarcastic remarks as I went, feeling idiotic for doing this at all. And then suddenly, during one of my rants I heard the familiar sound of a blender grinding ice and the sound of whip squirting and gushing from a shiny silver can. The smell of exotic coffees filled my nostrils and the crumb cake and little vanilla bean scones I always used to buy in three’s were thick in the air. But something was different about this place, from the layout of the room to the way the specials were written in colorful chalk upon the tiny blackboard, something was very different, indeed. It was dark. It seemed the room was swimming in a dense haze of gray. Anything that may have been red seemed muted, just barely bleeding through the gray that consumed it. No music was playing in the background, the kind that I always referred to as music for gays and intellects.

  A skinny, wrinkled man stood in line and a tall black-haired woman stood behind him holding a purse made of a Pomeranian. The purse growled and snapped at the woman when she reached her hand inside to pull out her wallet. Kate stood in front of the register, her shoulders slouched. She reached out to take the money from the black-haired woman and her dead-looking stare never changed.

  “What can we get started for you?” said Kate to the person next in line. She appeared drone-like, as if reading from a cue card; the tone of her voice listless.

  I didn’t know what to think.

  Another employee welcomed my company and me. The young man was tall and he wore glasses in a thin black frame.

  “This is a weird place,” said Sophia as though she’d never seen a real coffee house before. “And what’s that horrid smell?”

  “Coffee?” Tsaeb ridiculed.

  “No, it’s something else.”

  Taurus sniffed the air behind them. “She’s right,” he said, “It’s something other than coffee, alright.”

  “I don’t smell anything else,” I said.

  “Me neither,” agreed Tsaeb.

  “It’s...,” Taurus took another deep inhale, “I think it’s...body odor.” He scrunched his giant nose.

  Sophia cupped her hand over her face; her voice sounded muffled behind it as she complained. Tsaeb and I lifted our arms and cautiously took a clumsy covert whiff of our armpits.

  “Must be one of you two,” snarled Tsaeb. “Only you can smell it—I bet it’s the imp.”

  I took my place in line, ignoring the pointless conversation that I knew would just lead to another argument between them. And while I walked toward the end of the line, Sophia and Taurus found the culprit. A hideous little old lady had been standing right behind them, but Taurus was so enormous that he easily hid her completely and without realizing. A crooked cane held up her wobbling weight and she was terribly hunchbacked. She wore a dark blue granny dress with a ruffle draped around the neck and shoulders that looked like she ripped the doily right off her coffee table and sewed it onto the fabric herself.

  “Norman,” said the little old lady, “is that you, Norman?”

  I did a double take, absently edging my way back out of line as my eyes grew wide with disbelief.

  “Well I’ll be!” she shouted in a hoarse voice. “Come here and let me see you! Let me see how much you’ve grown!”

  Tsaeb looked mortified; the question on his face: ‘You know this smelly old bat?’ He pinned his nose between his finger and thumb, backing away to stand next to Sophia and her new gigantic best friend.

  “Grandma Elouise?” I thought that surely my eyes were playing tricks on me...I hoped they were.

  “Come, little Sophia,” said Taurus, and he led her to a seat in a corner of the room near an eerie flickering light that looked more gray than orange.

  Tsaeb hopped up onto a stool at the bar just a foot away and rested his chin in his hand with a heavy, irritated sigh.

  “Last time I saw you I was laid up in St. Vincent’s with a broken hip.”

  The closer she moved toward me, the tenser I became. Finally, I was beginning to smell the same stench that the others had, and I wondered how in the Name of God I never smelled it sooner. Flies buzzed around her and she stank like something dead. I stood stiffly, holding my breath the best I could and choking back the burning moisture welling up in my eyes. She did look like my Grandma Elouise, but I never remembered her features being so hideous and scary. I had never been afraid to hug her, even though I didn’t particularly like it. Now, I would rather hug a Black Plague victim. Her sunken eyes sent shivers up the back of my neck. The way her gross, porky tongue slithered out of her mouth when she talked made my stomach churn and shudder.

  I took an even bigger step backward and bumped into the shelf behind me that held all the coffee mugs and other various coffee-related products.

  “How are you here?” I asked her. “Are you dead?”

  The little old lady, who I refused to believe was my real grandma who was ninety-something, passed me a rather curious look. Suddenly, she started coughing. The hacking was so loud and grotesque that for a long, torturous moment nothing else could be heard over it. She made a grinding sound with her throat, hocked up a bloody wad of phlegm, and spat it on the floor. My eyes rolled behind the lids and I turned quickly, holding myself up with one hand firmly gripping the shelf. My face and hands felt clammy and I gagged violently, but managed not to vomit.

  “You alright?”

  I felt a hand on my shoulder from behind and I turned and jerked away. “Please stay back,” I demanded, “just stay away from me.”

  “Oh, what’s wrong with my favorite grandson?” It was strange, but she seemed genuinely worried. “You don’t look so good,” she added, “Here, let me help you to a chair.”

  “No, I’m fine.” I put my hand up. “Y-you...you just stay over there and I’ll be fine.”

  “Are you going to order?” said Kate from behind the counter. “Though, I know what you want; the same damn thing you always get when you come to watch me—creepy fucking stalker.”

  My eyes blinked once and then I turned to look at her. Did she really just say that?

  I left the little old lady and went toward the counter. “What did you say?”

  “I said you’re a creepy fucking stalker tha
t won’t leave me alone,” said Kate with a little more character than the drone-like girl she was before. “I almost quit my job because of you; always coming in here to pretend you’re like everybody else, but you could spend a buck at Mickey D’s for coffee and be just as satisfied...I bet you don’t even like coffee, do you?”

  Still, I was at a loss and couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Kate was always so sweet and even a bit shy. She had never given me any indication that I was a bother to her.

  “My grandson doesn’t like coffee,” said the little old lady. “I know for a fact he don’t, but I happen to know what he does like.” Her expression was sly, like she was the keeper of all my dirtiest secrets and she was about to spill the worst one. “He loooves my special peach cobbler and I bet nothing in this fast place you could give him could ever match it.”

  Kate ignored her.

  “Going to order, or what?”

  After contemplating my answer, I said, “Sure, I’ll have a medium latte.”

  “Oh, so now you’re going to change up on me,” argued Kate, “so I’ll have to re-remember what you want all over again.” She grumbled some more and then added, “Fine. Whatever.”

  “What’s wrong with you?” I said.

  “She’s probably just sexually frustrated,” said the little old lady. “Ignore her and come sit with your grandma so we can catch up.”

  “You’re not my grandma,” I barked.

  “I sure as hell am—your grandpa and I went through three sons before we had your dad.” She put her long, crooked finger up to her cracked lips. “But shhh, one of those sons wasn’t your grandpa’s.” Her already hunched shoulders came up near her cheeks and she cackled quietly.

  “Went through them?”

  “Yes, miscarried two and the third I aborted myself after drinking down about a gallon of castor oil and some other junk when I was about four months along.”

  “You killed your baby?”

  “Had to,” she said simply. “Couldn’t pass off a black baby as your grandpas, now could I?” The cackling was not as quiet this time.

  I began swatting flies away from my head. One flew right into my ear and buzzed furiously as it bounced back and forth before finding its way out again. I slapped the side of my head hard and jerked around frantically trying to get it out even though it had already gone. When finally I looked up again, I was no longer standing at the counter, but at the opposite end where customers pick up the drinks they ordered. I wondered how I got there.

  “One medium latte for...” the young man turned the cup sideways to see the name Kate had scribbled there with a black Sharpie. “Norman.” He placed it on the counter and gave it a shove, sliding it over into my hand at precisely the right moment. It barely occurred to me that I wasn’t asked to pay for the drink.

  “Your grandmother was a whore,” said Kate not looking at anyone. “Doesn’t surprise me at all. Might even explain where you inherited that sex obsessed stalker part of you.”

  “I’m not sex obsessed,” I growled, and then set the plastic cup down harshly upon the counter top. “I’ve never done nor said anything to you that would give you reason to think of me that way....”

  “No?” said Kate, finally looking straight at me, “You never came in and hung out for over an hour, pretending to read the newspaper while you sat back watching every move I made? Or, what about the time you tried to force me to take a ten-dollar tip when you know I can’t take personal tips. Then when I refused, you stuck it back in your wallet instead of putting it in the tip jar.”

  “Yeah but—”

  “Or, the night you came in and insisted that I make your drink even though I was busy doing other things.” Kate slammed her open hand upon the counter. “Actually, you’ve done that too many times to count.”

  “And what’s wrong with any of that?” I was getting pissed. “You haven’t named one thing that would put me in the stalker category. You act like I’ve been hiding outside your window every night, or watching you use the restroom with my camera phone slipped over the top of the stall.”

  Kate tried to speak, but it was still my turn.

  “I liked you,” I said with a twinge of embarrassment, “and was too shy to come out and say anything.”

  “Too afraid to step up and be a man.” Kate smirked. “It’s guys like you that either fall in the pussy or creepy category.”

  “And what about the general nice guy category?” I was furious by now. I could feel the veins near my temples throb and my face and hands were hot with shame. “If I knew how much of a bitch you were I would’ve never wasted my time going to see you. I never would’ve imagined what you’d look like standing next to me in stupid little places like the movie theatre, or ride lines at the fair. I never would’ve—”

  “I get it,” Kate interrupted indifferently. She walked away and went back to the register to help the next person in line. “What can we get started for you?”

  My mind was spinning with anger. Unbelievable! I thought. And...shit; after all that and I still have a thing for her! I grabbed my cup and tossed it in the trash next to me.

  “He’s always been that way,” said another familiar voice. “He was whiney growing up—‘I scraped my knee.’...‘My head hurts, momma, take me to the emergency room.’... ‘I fell down, momma.’ And he’d cry and cry and cry until the sun came up the next morning.”

  I stopped cold just when I had made up my mind so quickly about leaving. I couldn’t move. My feet felt like they were sixty pounds each. When I found the will to look away in search of Tsaeb, he was nowhere in sight, but neither was Sophia nor Taurus.

  Now I was frozen and frantic.

  Strange people surrounded me, but each one of them were people that I knew. The woman with the Pomeranian purse was my Aunt Linda. I also didn’t notice that the skinny wrinkled man that stood in front of my aunt was the old man that used to live at the end of my street before I turned thirteen. My friends and I would always go to his house and clean up after his pet goats. The man paid each of us three dollars and sometimes gave us bags of cheap candy he got from the corner store he owned.

  “He caught his father and I in bed one night and I could swear that he purposely walked past our room a lot more after that like he was hoping to catch us again.”

  “What!” I lumbered angrily up to the woman that, like the little old lady, I refused to believe was truly related to me. “That’s a lie!” And to me, it was a lie. I remembered that traumatizing incident vividly, even though I had been trying to forget it for the past twenty-years. I thought things like that really only ever happened on TV. But to insinuate that I wanted to see them again was completely wrong and entirely unacceptable.

  But wait...what if my mother actually believed that?

  What is this? I asked myself, though still staring at this woman who looked very much like my mother. She dressed like my mother with her ankle-length skirt and long-sleeved button-up top. Her dark brown hair braided neatly against her back. She wore no make-up and no jewelry.

  “...and what a sinner he is,” my fake mother went on, “I tried to teach him the Path of God, but the Devil had too many claws in him. Ultimately, he had to save himself, but not everyone can go to Heaven.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said stepping up, “I know you’re not my real mother because she’d never come to a place like this. She doesn’t believe in,” I put up my fingers and made the quotation sign, “polluting her body with chemicals and drugs.”

  “But I’m not,” said the woman who looked like my mother. “I only came here because you asked me to.”

  “I asked you....”

  “Now he’ll pretend he doesn’t remember,” said my ex-wife, Amanda, “so he can get out of it.”

  The lump in my throat just got bigger.

  “Proof that mankind is…well, an oxymoron.”

  --

  OH NO…ANYONE BUT HER....

  “Pretend he didn’t remember my asking him to go with
me to my sister’s birthday party. Act like he never heard me mention anything about needing the pipes under the bathroom sink fixed, or the trash taken out or the wasp nest above the front door destroyed.”

  “I did destroy that nest!” I roared. “And got stung twice in the process!”

  The woman who looked like my ex-wife ignored my shouting and went on talking to my fake mother and Kate.

  “I felt like I was being humped by a dog when he’d screw me.”

  “Oh my word,” said my fake mother, putting her hand up to her mouth and shaking her head in a disgraced and shocked fashion. She looked like someone next to her just used the F-word in church.

  I was so stunned it took a few moments longer than it should have to get my next set of angry words out. “Humped by a dog?” I slammed my fist on the table beside me, knocking two cups of coffee over. “And just how would you know what it feels like to be humped by a dog? You’re a crazy—”

  “Hey, my past relationships were, I admit, a bit freakier than ours.”

  That was definitely not something I had expected her to say. In fact, my question was more-so a sick joke, a taunt.

  My fake ex-wife kept on talking, but I couldn’t hear any more of it. What she had just revealed made my mind dizzy with panic and my ears deaf to anything else she had to say.

  “You should learn to control that anger of yours, Norman,” said the woman who looked like my grandmother. A yellow-white maggot slid out of the corner of her left eye and fell in the folds of her dress sleeve.

  “This is crazy!” I went quickly toward the door, but was stopped by a man that looked like my father, the only one so far out of all these people who really was dead and may have had a reason to be here.

  “Where you goin’, boy?”

  “I-I uhhh, I was leaving.”

  “Not until you face the truth you’re not.”

  “If all this is the truth, I don’t want to face it.”

  “Well, that’s just too bad. You can’t run all your life. You always did, Norm. You always ran away from everything.”