A Perfect Blindness

by W. Lance Hunt

  “You weren’t … supposed to be here.”

  “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I was going to tell you. In private. Explain everything.”

  “What’s to explain?” She slams her fist on the keyboard. “You’re taking off.”

  “Why I have to go. Have to.”

  “You’ve already told the whole ga’damned world you’re leaving.” She throws her hand back at the crowd behind her. “You may as well tell your audience, your precious little audience, why too.” Her voice is livid and full of hurt, spittle flying with each word.

  “To move where I can get what I need. To get a real chance. So I can stop playing joints like this for twenty bucks and a watered-down drink. Not even that sometimes. You wouldn’t understand. You’ve already got what you want.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Your title. Your career. You’re head of a department for a New York ad agency. You’re it. You’re in. That means you can never leave here. Not for me.” I jab my chest with a couple of fingers. “For New York. For Madison Avenue, sure. But not for me. And I can’t stay here and get what I want.”

  “You’re a dumbass, Jonathan Starks. A true shit-for-brains.”

  “Tell me you’d pick up and leave your job and come with me to Chicago. Come on. Pack up and be ready to move. Tomorrow. Do it.”

  She glares.

  “See. You won’t go, and I can’t stay, and it’s fucked up, but that’s the way it is.”

  Her breath heaves.

  I watch her from behind my keyboard.

  “You’re stupid,” she says.

  “I refuse to wake up one day and find I’m fifty and that all I have to show for it is a few Xeroxed flyers from no-name dives in Columbus, Ohio.”

  “What am I? Just a lay? A pastime? A steady fuck?”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  “Didn’t you?” She looks ready to leap onstage. Instead she gives me the Italian salute, bending her right arm into an L and grabbing it inside the elbow with her left hand. She spins and pushes her way through the rapt audience.

  “Of course,” Scott says. “Your life as performance art. Bowie’s got nothing on you. You don’t need any Spiders from Mars. You’ve got Amy.”

  “Had,” I snap.

  The night only gets worse. Sean walks out as soon as he closes up his bass’s case and picks up its stand. Marsha demands we drop off her drum kit at her house and won’t stay. Breaking down with only two of us is a real bitch—especially lugging those W-bins with Scott.

  Dropping off Marsha’s drum kit, Scott’s pissed in that crazy quiet way that makes me nervous, squinting like Blondie from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. He says nothing on the way back home.

  I know I fucked up and burned bridges. Yet what really cuts into me is that Amy didn’t deserve that.

  But what were you even doing there? You said you’d be working all night on whatever the hell project it was. I needed to talk to you. Alone.

  Now that’ll never happen.

  Chapter 11

  One Night at Crazy Mama’s

  —Jonathan—

  The four days since the show at the Main High have been a tumult of packing what we can take, getting rid of what we can’t, trying to work a last few shifts to have a couple of bucks for Chicago, and turning in our no-day notice at work. I’m getting too little sleep, feeling excitement and dread, hating what happened at the show, and regretting the way I left things with Amy. All this rumbles around in my mind while I’m alone, sitting at a table in Crazy Mama’s the night before the move.

  At least I don’t have to lie anymore.

  I slide a Camel unfiltered out of my pack

  “If you’re going to kill yourself,” I say to the cigarette. “You may as well do it with style. Right?”

  I slip it between my lips and ignite my Zippo with a soft click and pop. I feel the heat as I draw a deep breath.

  Snapping the lighter shut, I look back at the dancers in the mirrored room next to me. The mirrors make the dozen or so people look like many dozens, all arcing and then flicking their multiplied elbows and knees. They always look down—never directly at each other. That’s the only rule to dancing here at Crazy Mama’s: be alone. Like the Sisters of Mercy sing, “Life is short and love is always over in the morning”—a line I should have thought of.

  Looking at my watch, I see Scott’s a half hour late for our last drink at Mama’s.

  Then fingers alight on my shoulder.

  You?

  “Amy,” I say, looking up at her. “I, um … Didn’t think I’d ever—”

  “See me again?” she asks, giving a small pout. She’s dyed a shock of her dark brown hair bloodred. It falls across a bright blue eye. Her shirt—open almost to her belly—clings to her like a thin black skin. In her short skirt and ripped fishnet stockings, she looks like a Gothic Venus standing above me. She radiates sexuality like a challenge.

  I’m gonna miss you. Like hell.

  “Where else would you two go before you leave?” she says.

  “I’m sorry about the show—”

  “Shh,” she says. “Give me a hug.”

  I stand and wrap myself around her, knowing it’s only a tease to drag out the end, which I’ve been surviving by refusing to think about it. Now, feeling her body pressed into me makes leaving her seem impossible. Tomorrow, though, I’m really gone. For good. We can’t ever run into each other, won’t ever happen to fall into bed together again, as if it’s our first time, when my thumb and forefinger found the tab on her jeans’ zipper and pulled it down, tooth by tooth, and nothing but our bodies existed as we tumbled off that edge, free-falling together—the same way it would feel again right now if only I lifted her skirt and slid my hand between her thighs.

  It would feel as hot as when I sing “Amy’s Face” and “The Ritual” onstage. It’s always about you, Amy. Always has been. This is so fucked up.

  “You have to go?” she asks.

  You never once asked me to stay.

  “Little late for that,” I say.

  She pulls tighter and holds me there. “Okay,” she says and then pushes me away. “That’s fine.”

  “Glad you approve.” I sit back down at the tiny, round table.

  “Do I?” She sits across from me.

  “You have to.”

  “Why do I ‘have to’?”

  “You won’t go. I can’t stay.”

  “I can’t—”

  “You won’t.”

  “You’re the one choosing to leave.”

  “You knew this was always possible.”

  “So why now? Why—”

  “Why what? You think that asking again will change the ending to happily ever after?” I ask, an edge of resentment slipping into my tone. As if you’ll find some fault in my answer—some illogic that, once righted, will keep us together? Let us slip through a crack in reality. Let us escape who we are and everything that means.

  “Well?”

  “Because Columbus is a cow town. There are really only three bars in this burg we can play. Cleveland, a couple more; Wheeling, one; Cincy, one or two; Chicago—it’s got twenty or thirty. Madison and Milwaukee are close. So’s West Bend. And I can’t not play.”

  “Bigger market, bigger exposure, a better chance,” she says with a tone of resignation. “It’s only that—”

  “Don’t,” I say. I hate her for not even asking me, once, to stay, and then never finding a way out of this for us. So now we’re really at the end. “Just … don’t.” I look away and at the people dancing, pretending to not want each other.

  Her hand falls on my knee. I don’t move. Softly, her fingernails scratch the fabric of my jeans. I stare at my cocktail, the slivers of ice floating around the scotch. I
should get up. Go dance. But I want her to keep going, to push it—especially now, at the very end. The strokes her fingers make are slow but go farther with each pass, now reaching high up my thigh, and her lips are wet and slightly parted, and she has such an innocent expression.

  Everything’s a mess, but all I want is to lift up her skirt and find she’s wearing crotchless stockings. I’d lay her across the table, spread her open, and bend my mind around her body so it would be like our first night again.

  This is so fucked up.

  Looking away, I stare at the lonely dancers.

  Amy, I can’t do this if you don’t make me.

  Lightly, her finger slips under the fly of my jeans and then slowly presses down the length of the zipper.

  “We, um,” I say, looking at her so innocent little-girl expression. Oh, please pull it open. One last time. “You shouldn’t …”

  “You’re leaving tomorrow.”

  “Exactly.”

  “What more reason do you need?” she asks.

  “None.”

  “I already miss you,” she says, holding the tab of the zipper.

  “I’m right here.” I stare hard into her blazing sapphire eyes.

  “But you won’t be.” She tugs on the tab of my zipper. “Let’s go to mine.”

  I grab her hand. “No.”

  “Our last time. Alone.”

  “Not your place. That would be the last—”

  Her fingers cover my lips and then grasp my arm, and I let her pull me to my feet and drag me past the bar, into the back room, past the female mannequin dressed in combat fatigues and gas mask, and into the women’s bathroom. She slams the door shut and rams the slender bolt home.

  “I want you so goddamned much,” I whisper.

  Pushing me against the sink, she kneels, unbuttons and then unzips my jeans, and pulls them to my ankles.

  Someone starts pounding on the door.

  Her hand and head start moving backward and forward, the shock of red hair bobbing gently as the realization I’m leaving tomorrow—not planning to, but actually leaving here—pours through my body like ice water. I feel as though I’m tipping over. I push her head away.

  She looks up startled.

  “It’s our last time,” I say as I stumble off the sink. “This is a toilet. It stinks.”

  “You’ve fantasied about this,” she says, hiking her skirt up to her waist, and bending over the sink.

  She’s wearing crotchless stockings.

  “Last time,” I mouth, grabbing her hips, my fingers curling around the smooth dip of her waist. Last time I’ll feel her. I stroke her hip and the soft skin of her belly. In the polished steel mirror, I stare at Amy’s face, those flaming sapphire eyes, her wet lips. My Gothic Venus. When she looks back into my reflected eyes, I enter her, watching her gasp.

  This is us, lover: getting God.

  Watching each other in the mirror, I can’t believe any of this is quite real: the narrow, graffiti-covered walls, the Boomtown Rats’ “Mary of the Fourth Form” playing from the corner speaker, the angry pounding on the door, Amy mewling. It all grows so loud, and I can’t think. I give up trying to control anything, and finally falling to my knees, I kiss the soft flesh on the backs of her legs. I can smell the sex over the stink of the bathroom, and I don’t want to move; this will be the last time I’ll be able to smell us.

  Turning around, she kneels and drapes her arms around me. “I love you, Jonathan.”

  “Oh, no. Please don’t.”

  “Get a fuckin’ room!” a woman’s voice shouts from the other side of the door. She pounds harder, and the door shudders. “I gotta piss!”

  “You can’t go … leave me alone,” Amy says.

  The ecstasy I was feeling shrivels up. We’re kneeling on the filthy floor of the women’s toilet—me with my pants around my ankles, her with her skirt rolled up her belly—and it reeks of vomit and piss and dirt, and the music is loud, and someone is beating the hell out of the door, yelling at us.

  “Amy, don’t do this.” Standing, I grab the waist of my jeans and pull them up.

  “Do what?”

  “Come off it, Amy,” I say. I start buttoning my jeans. “This is torture.”

  “Look at me,” she says.

  “We can’t … I can’t. Won’t. It’s hell.”

  “Asshole, look at me.”

  I look. Her expression is frightening: furious, hurt, frantic.

  “You’re not going to walk out of here,” she snarls. “Not like that. No. I’m not going to be left like some groupie whore. Like a—”

  “Like a what!?” I shout. “Amy. I’m moving. To Chicago. Tomorrow.”

  “Why?”

  “You know why. And you couldn’t figure a way around it.” I reach for the slide lock on the door.

  Amy grabs my arm.

  “Yeah. I have to go, and you can’t find a way to come. Or won’t.”

  Someone is kicking the door.

  “I’m busy!” Amy screams.

  “You never even asked me to stay. Not once,” I say, reaching for the slide lock again.

  Amy punches me in the mouth.

  I taste blood. As I reach to touch my lip, she tackles me. My head hits the wall, and then my body thuds heavily on the concrete floor. She straddles me, slapping my face. “Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!” she screams. I’m grabbing at her arms, trying to fend them away.

  The door crashes open. A pair of thick, strong arms wrap around hers, pinning them to her sides. She lifts off me, howling.

  “Amy!” Scott shouts. “Calm down! Now!”

  She thrashes against his grip, her skirt still bunched over her waist. He swings her around and pins her body to the wall. “Amy! You done making a fool of yourself?”

  A pale-skinned woman with drugstore-red hair steps over me and to the toilet two feet away. “Asshole.” She pulls down her pants and squats over the toilet. “Why didn’t you … ahhhh … I ought to’ve pissed on you. What are you looking at? Fuckin’ perv!”

  I roll to my side and push myself up from the floor. Quickly, I step through the door, which hangs askew and won’t close completely. A crowd gawks. Several pissed-off women glare at me. Amy and Scott are gone. Gingerly, I touch my lip and then see a crimson stripe of blood on my finger. This is not the way I wanted it—our last time.

  Brushing off my jeans, I wade through the gawkers.

  In the main room, the stairs are past the bar. I touch my lip with my tongue; it stings.

  Scott’s head arises from the stairwell, and then his large body, and once whole, he walks over to me. He looks at my swollen lip. “She did a nice job. First day in Chicago. Have fun explaining that one. ‘Oh, some ex kicked my ass in the women’s toilet.’”

  “We—” I say, and then I walk around him, hoping to find her rising from the stairs. Not the way it should end. Not for us. I could run down the stairs. Maybe she’s waiting for me.

  And what?

  Scott appears next to me. “Look. I’m not busting your balls for the hell of it. Everything’s on the line here. This is way too important. It’s everything we’ve been working toward for the past seven, whatever, years.”

  “I know,” I say, touching my swollen lip. “But it shouldn’t have gone down like this.”

  “You announce you’re leaving town, leaving her, in front of an audience after a show. You say good-bye with your pants around your ankles in a women’s toilet. This should tell you something. Who does shit like that?”

  “Or that …”

  “Or what? That it’s wrong leaving her? That you should stay here?”

  “That we couldn’t find some other way,” I say.

  “Or maybe this was the only way you could. Doesn’t matter. It’s done. Now, can we think about tomorrow’s move?”

>   “How bad do I look?”

  “Pouty. Not in a good way.”

  Keith, the owner of Crazy Mama’s appears next to us, running his fingers through long jet-black hair. He looks like a cadaver, with gray-white skin and hollowed-out cheeks like a skull’s. “Scott, man, you busted the door.”

  “Lock. I busted the lock.”

  “The hinges too. The door’s all hanging weird and doesn’t close right. Now I’ve got to deal with that shit.”

  “And?” Scott asks.

  “It needs to get fixed. That costs money. You’re leaving tomorrow,” he says, pushing up his sleeves, revealing tattoos of sinuous black-figure bear claws and Celtic runes along the insides of his arms.

  Scott frowns. “Keith. Jesus. We’ve promoted how many nights here? We’ve brought how many people in here to drink your overpriced booze? That last party we played here, you must have cleared three or four grand. Easy.”

  “But—”

  “But what?” Scott is so big and solid; Keith so slight and fragile looking. “We’ve made this place thousands over the years. It’s a five-buck slide lock. A couple of screws. I mean, come on. We’ve made you boatloads of money. You can take care of this little problem. Fair is fair, right? We’ve already told you we’ll play here when we start touring again. You’ll be able to buy a whole new bathroom for what you’ll make on that.” Scott holds up his hands, offering to hear anything the owner has to say.

  The owner shakes his head, turns, and strides back to the bar.

  “Let’s get our last shot here,” he says. “Then, since we’ve got most of our crap in boxes, I’m thinking, we load up tonight. Except for our mattresses and a change of clothes. We’ll be off to Chicago by seven. Get there by one. Then have the rest of the afternoon to unpack. I want to get something out of the way tonight.”

  “Sounds good,” I say, wanting only to get drunk but knowing packing’s best.

  “Fine. Settled,” he says, standing up. “I’ll get the shots.”

  While I’m waiting, I keep almost seeing Amy walk back up the stairs, but I’m disappointed every time.

  He returns with two shot glasses, full to the top, and places them neatly on the table without a drop spilling. “You see. Knew Keith’d understand. Didn’t even charge us for these.” He holds up his glass. “To the future.”