by Matthew Crow
I placed the box on my bed. Excited, I have to say, that it may have been a keepsake from your good self. Another carving, perhaps, or something equally thoughtful.
Alas, it was not meant to be. On opening the box I was elated. The posies were a dusted pink and the roses not much darker. A tad old fashioned for my liking, but the sentiment remained the same. And their perfume! It shot up and darted about the room like a new kitten. Amidst the damp of the room that fragrance, those colours... it was my first taste of life in weeks.
Only it wasn’t life Jonah. Quite the opposite in fact.
I suppose that’s always been my trouble. I zoom in, closer and closer, until I like what I see. And at first I did like it. But context maketh the gesture, and I suppose even flowers need context. It was only after a moment of bliss that I realised what exactly I had been sent.
It was a wreath, Jonah. No two ways about it.
I managed to make it to the bathroom before I threw up. Then, true to form, I dug deep within my blankets and went back to sleep.
Back at the cafe J became a more regular fixture. Hovering over uneaten mounds of food until it was just he and I, alone at last. “They work you too hard in here,” he’d say as I turned the sign on the door to ‘closed’ whilst allowing him to sit for as long as he liked.
“Only as hard as I deserve. Besides, I don’t mind so much.”
“In it for the love of the game, huh?”
“In it for the diversion. Besides, we got one or two regulars who make it all worthwhile.”
“Well aren’t you on the charm offensive tonight?” he said as I poured him a complimentary coffee and refilled my cup.
“So, what’s your story then?” he asked one evening.
On nights like these, when my services were not required at the club, I’d let him sit for hours and hours. He had a sense of loneliness about him. Beneath the staunch veneer which could, by a more callous soul, have been read as ignorant, I thought I sensed a man just crying out for company. And so I’d let him sit and talk. J was a natural talker. Selective, always. But a talker nonetheless. Though I would hate to make these nights sound in any way selfless. I was more than happy to sit there opposite him, taking in that handsome face of his, drinking his half-truths like a hungry dog.
“You know mine by now,” he said. “Hell I done nothing but bend your ear since I met you.”
“I don’t mind. I like it. I know my story, anyway, yours is a lot more interesting.”
“Not to me. Truth be told there’s not much more I’d like than to get to know you more.”
I felt my stomach flutter but forced myself to maintain the icy indifference I had adopted since meeting J. All that hard work was certainly not going to be sacrificed at the altar of one smooth line, that was for sure. “Well I’m an ongoing project.”
“Aren’t we all?”
“Why don’t you help me out with some headers, and I’ll see if I can’t fill in the blanks?”
J smiled and shifted in his seat as though about to take aim. “Alright. Where did you grow up?”
“Here and there.”
“The game only works if you play properly.”
“Forces baby. I never lasted more than eighteen months in any one town.”
“You ever make it abroad, you know, growing up?”
“No siree, I’m the product of these fair soils.”
“Alright. College?”
“See name-badge and swollen ankles,” I said drolly.
“Good point.”
“Live?”
“Nearby.”
“Favourite food?”
“Cigarettes.”
“Earliest memory?”
“My father.”
“Doing what?”
“The bare minimum.”
“Favourite colour?”
“Blue.”
“Drink?”
“Scotch. Though only ever after midday.”
“Midday?”
“Before midday I’ll settle for a beer,” I said, breaking a piece of his soggy pie crust in my fingers and pressing it into my mouth.
“Brothers, sisters?”
“Only child.”
“Boyfriend?”
Silence.
“Alright then,” he said, eating the final piece of pie left on the plate. He offered me a cigarette from his packet and I accepted, bending down towards his cupped hand and sucking in the flame of the match. “I feel like we’re nearing even ground now, you and I.”
“Glad I could be of assistance.”
“So... what else?”
“That’s about the size of it,” I say, suddenly lightheaded from the cigarette.
“Girl like you must be full of stories.”
“One or two.”
“You sure like to make a man work for his payment.”
“Call it a test of will.” Another silence and then, feeling generous, I began. “Alright. Something interesting. How long you been here, exactly?”
“About a month.”
“You drive?”
He nodded.
“Ever drive out, past the last buildings, into the desert?”
“Never had reason to. Yet.”
“Well if you did you’d find a place... ”
“Now I’m gripped.”
“A bar, The Iguana Den. You heard people talk about it?”
“Can’t say I have.”
“Can’t say you will either. It tends to attract a, well, let’s just say a more discreet type of customer.”
“I think we’re on the same page.”
“Well, would you believe me if I told you I danced there sometimes?”
He looked at me and smiled, lighting a cigarette. I told him everything. Well, almost everything. I told him about finding it by accident, about Eve, about the characters and the customers and the dreamy glow I got from doing what I did. J sat silently, chain smoking and hanging on to my every word. It gave me a kick, to tease him the way I did. At every key detail I’d make sure to hesitate somehow - drag on a cigarette perhaps, or take a sip of the now invisible coffee from my cold cup - and then continue a little after the detail I had omitted, causing him to wince though, ever the gentleman, never correct me or force me to backtrack.
Sweet, I thought at the time, how easily led a lonely man can be.
“Well you are a dark horse. I always knew you had it in you.”
“I try my best. You want any more coffee?”
“No thanks, I’m good.”
“I hope you don’t think I’m a fallen women J. I went into this with my eyes wide open.”
“Just like those boys pushing dollars into your garters.”
“I wouldn’t take to the pole for anything less than twenty.”
“A woman of principles.”
“So, you any further forward with your quest?”
He cleared his throat and became visibly less comfortable. “I got one or two leads. Why, you want to help me for a cut of the profit?”
“I don’t think I’d make such a good detective.”
“A spy, maybe?”
“Why’s that?”
“Well here you have us thinking you’re such a sweet girl when all the time... ”
“All the time I’m hawking my flesh for an honest month’s rent.”
“I wouldn’t put it quite like that. You could help though.”
“I thought I was helping.”
“You are. You are. Man needs a friend no matter how focused he is.”
“Well here’s to friendship,” I said, raising my empty cup.
“To friendship,” he said, raising his cup. “Seriously though, you could do some listening for me. Sort of place you’re working is exactly the sort of place this girl sets her traps, if you catch me.”
“I promise I’ll try. How’s that?”
“Good enough for me,” he stubbed his cigarette out into the saucer we’d been using as ashtray and as he extended his wrist I caught a glimpse
of his heavy gold watch.
“Good God! The time!”
We hurriedly ordered the remnants of our night. J threw the contents of the ashtray straight out of the open window as I piled the plates and cups into the sink with an ominous cracking sound. Out back behind the counter I went to take my coat from the hook when I felt two hands on my waist.
“Want me to drive you home?”
I picked up my coat and turned to face him. “I brought my car,” I said and watched his face fall. “But that’s the only reason. How about you put me on a promise? I’d like to see your quarters sometimes.”
“A promise. I like that,” he said with a twitching smile.
“You a man of your word?”
He bent down and kissed me hard on the lips. I kissed back, dragging my hands across his face. He must have been freshly groomed that very afternoon, as when I ran my hand through his hair, stray follicles stuck to my skin like iron shavings, as though he were disintegrating before my eyes. “I’ll see you around, dark horse,” he said with his back to me as he waltzed cockily past through the flapping jaw of the service entrance.
“Not if I see you first,” I whispered, though couldn’t be certain he heard me.
Back at the trailer, Eve was sitting on the bed mending a hole in her nightgown whilst still wearing it. A cigarette jigged beneath last night’s lips as she carefully drew the pin from her skin.
“Morning,” I kicked my work shoes across the trailer and flung my bag onto the couch before joining her on the bed.
“Verity, don’t tell me you been out all night long and didn’t even think to call. I was worried sick. Barely slept a wink.”
“Sorry,” I said, the thought having never once crossed my mind. In truth it’s been so long since I was anyone’s responsibility, even their concern, that my regression into cohabitation slipped my mind completely.
“I’m just joking with you. I got no tags on you girly. I couldn’t sleep for excitement. I want to know everything.”
I lay back on the bed and felt myself immediately start to doze. “Nothing to say.”
“Nothing doesn’t take all night,” she looped and knotted the thread before snapping it with her teeth. Then with the pin safely secured in the fabric of the lampshade lay down beside me. “That same boy?”
“Yeah. J.”
“Where’d he take you?”
“Coffee shop.”
“He took you to work? Darling you need to find yourself a man with some money. Or at very least one not too shy to rob for the woman he loves. I got me a little black book just full of the type if you’re interested.”
“It wasn’t a date.”
“It was something.”
“We talked.”
“All night?”
“Didn’t realise what time it was.”
“So you talked... ” she said, leaning in and over me, straddling me with her legs.
“Yes.”
“That’s it?”
“Yes.”
“Nothing more?”
“No,” I said, pulling a pillow over my face.
“Verity, you aren’t telling me something, and instinct tells me it’s exactly the sort of details I like hearing the most.”
I pulled the pillow from my face and pressed the hair from my eyes. “He kissed me. Said next time we’d spend the night somewhere more comfortable.”
“So you didn’t even sleep with him?”
“NO!”
“Don’t sound so shocked!” Eve said, climbing off me and returning to her side of the bed where she lay, pressing her head against mine. “I think it’s a shame, is all. I don’t think you can know anyone until you’ve been to bed with them.”
“For all the good it did you,” I said lazily, and within seconds a pillow launched lightly across from Eve’s side of the bed and hit me in the face. I laughed and so did she.
“That’s for besmirching my good name! Besides, it did me plenty good. Meant I got to know they weren’t right on day one.” She curled her legs up and lay her arm across me. “You tired?”
“Exhausted.”
“Me too,” said Eve.
And for the first and only time she slipped to sleep before I did.
As I lay there neither asleep nor awake I thought of Eve’s sweet way with words and couldn’t help but smile. Each person I’ve ever come close to knowing I’ve shared a bed with in one way or another, though more often than not in the biblical sense. But where does that leave you and me, I wonder? The ancients said love was a mystical force, completely separate from matters as lowly as those of the flesh. Perhaps that’s us Jonah. We transcend the carnal.
Yet there is something to be said for closeness Jonah, and not just of mind but of body too. We could protect one another, of that I am sure. Given my recent downturn and your current predicament I never met two people more ready for a fresh start.
Of course my worst has already happened, though I fear yours is yet to come. You need to take any measures necessary to get rid of those men. I know you don’t need to be told as much, but to risk everything you have for some shadow of the past seems ridiculous. You are always in my thoughts, Jonah, even when I don’t say as much, and think of just how unlikely it seems that the two of us should now be as lonely as we are, on what feels like separate sides of the world.
So here’s what I ask. Let me love you. Let me worry for you. Let me protect you where for all these years you’ve protected me, which you have Jonah, you keep me safe from sorrow, from self; keep me out of harm just by being there. You’re the warm shadow whose outline I conduct myself by. And each time I try to grasp hold I’m held in complete indignation over my apparent gall. But why? You’re a free man, so you tell me. Your past crimes were upsetting to read but only because I hold you so dear. And though fey and fallible I am far from dim, and had suspected that such a lengthy incarceration was not the result of some missed tax payment or minor automobile misdemeanour. So please don’t let shame inhibit you. I want every part of you, good and bad. I don’t wish to make you uncomfortable. It just seems that for some time now we have been moving forwards hand in hand, but towards what? Where exactly do we go with what we have? You’re the most important part of my life and I’ve never so much heard you speak a word. How do you speak? Is your voice light and lyrical as your letters would suggest? Or is your penmanship the exception to the rule? Which side of your face do you prefer? Are your scars as evident as you’d have me believe? Do you allow yourself to smile freely, or try to maintain a sense of propriety where emotions are concerned?
Though only ever a fleeting notion I sometimes fool myself into thinking I don’t ever want your reality. That your letters provide me with everything I could ever need. It’s the fear Jonah, the chance of having to dispel something I hold in such esteem. But this is a lie. I want proof. I want more and more. I want you all. Perhaps this would be my undoing, and you are accurate once more in your reluctance. Maybe when faced with the old man behind the sheet I will become disillusioned and alone again. But I doubt it. To me it would be a risk worth taking a thousand times over, just for that fraction of a chance that you may in fact be everything I imagine you to be.
Think about it Jonah.
I don’t think you could ever disappoint me.
Eve had requested a couple off days off in pursuit of a gentleman who’d caught her at the coffee shop and wooed her relentlessly ever since. This was her preferred line on the subject and to correct her would have been unkind. In truth she’d followed him around town like a stray cat until he tossed her the driest bone of conversation in an attempt to rid himself of the swooning shadow that had cast itself to his routine. Eve’s version was that his wit and warmth set the world on fire and she knew the moments their eyes met that he was the one for her. In truth I doubt his input was little more than the most basic of greetings and a one-liner on the weather. Either way it was love once more.
“And I just know he’s the fathering type... ” she to
ld me for the thousandth time that morning, sitting cross legged on the floor, ironing pleats into her miniskirt in an ongoing bid to appear homely. “I just got to show him I got the sort of eggs he wants to scramble. Do you think I could tell him I got kids already? You know, just to show willing.”
“How fast do you want to see him run?” I said, applying lipstick using the back of a CD’s reflection.
“He’s sure the honourable type, I bet he’d take those children in and raise them as his own.”
“Eve?”
“What? Say, will you check on my cookies? I’m going to bump into him on the way to drop them off at the hospice. I bet he’d be swayed by my generous spirit, don’t you think?”
“You do realise you haven’t actually got any children?”
“I don’t know why anyone would say such a cruel thing to a woman.”
“The way you talk I sometimes wonder if it’s him or you you’re trying to kid.”
Eve rolled her eyes. “Jealousy is an ugly thing,” she said, stepping into the skirt and pulling it up around her waist. “God damn cotton’s hotter than summertime in hell. How’s my cookies?”
I checked through the glass and turned the gas down three settings. “Five minutes and you’re good to go.”
“Not quite,” she said, pressing her hands between her legs and pulling down her underwear which she flicked onto the laundry pile that now acted as third party in our sleeping arrangement. “There, that ought to do it,” she sashayed to the mirror and marvelled at her transformation. “You sure you don’t mind picking up my money? I just couldn’t bear to risk letting this one getting away.”
“It’ll be a pleasure,” I said, halfway out of the door. “Say, you really want to impress him try telling him you’re a virgin. That’ll do it for sure.”