A Perfect Blindness

by W. Lance Hunt

  “Yep, you guessed it. It’s the worldly one speaking. The innocent one is almost gone, barely able to smile anymore, her dreams lying broken in the corner, with me pretending she likes to live that way.

  “See, this is what they told her: ‘With looks like yours, you’ll go far.’ Look it; she did go far. She got the prize: me. And I got it all—exactly what they said she would.”

  She winks. “You know what I’m saying, Jennifer. ‘Just smile. You can get anything you want.’” She winks again. “Shoulda moved in with you. Shoulda kept looking at the magazines. You see, once you step inside the photographs, once you are what other people want to be, you find out, well …”

  She takes a pair of drinks.

  “So who am I now?” She sticks her tongue out and crosses her eyes.

  She takes another pair of sips. “Ah, liquid courage.

  “I shouldn’t say this. She might hear, and I don’t want to break the innocent girl’s heart—what’s left of it. I can’t let her know that once you get what you want, once you’re inside and you find it’s still only you, there’s nothing to dream of anymore. That’s the worst part about being here, inside of a magazine: you’ve gotten what you wished for, but you’re still the same. Glossy color and captions don’t change that. I’m only me, protecting the little one. Until I can’t anymore.”

  She walks toward the door to the balcony. “Stay where you are—on the outside of magazines, looking in.

  “Oh, Richard? Nice guy. Too wrapped up in his work, though. Us? I guess like everyone else, we had our ups and downs. It’s no different in here than out there. The problems aren’t something we enjoyed, and they’re beside the point, so we’re going to stop talking about that now, okay? That goes to show another problem. All you voyeurs know of me, but not one knows me. Not anymore. Not even you, Jennifer.”

  She takes two more drinks and opens the balcony door and looks outside.

  “Lovely day out. You should come over and take a look.”

  She beckons the camera and then gives a look of mock shock.

  “Oh, right. It will be days later, and the weather will be different. But it is lovely today. You know, it occurs to me right now how the weather changes the whole background of this. Take a storm, with thunder—all ominous. Or a cloudy day. Or foggy. Or drizzly. All so depressing. Weather like that would fit your expectations—the expectations you’ve fed on from books and magazines and movies and TV. Today, though, this sunny day. It really is appropriate, if unexpected.

  “I’m not depressed. No. I’m pissed that I got what I wanted, but it’s not at all what it looked like. It’s the same as you thinking a rainy day is more appropriate for a twenty-three-story dive. It’s a fake—an illusion. I blame imagination. But not mine. Not completely. Someone has to make up these magazine spreads, make up these dreams out of so much nothing. People fashioning what we should want, even if it never existed. Can never exist. ’Cause they are all fairy stories. Only Rumpelstiltskin spinning gold out of straw. It makes me angry that I believed. I believed in it so strongly I became it. It sucks worse ’cause this is real life and there’s no one to overhear him saying his real name. I’m losing my child—the innocent one, who still tries smiling. She’s so sweet.

  “I’m sorry, dear,” Charlene says, patting her own shoulder. “Have a drink.” She takes two big slugs.

  “I’m not letting that imp take her. She can still try to dream; I won’t tell her the truth.”

  She takes a long drink from one glass and walks back to the coffee table and sets the drained glass down.

  “Here’s to you. No, you. To us.” She drains the second glass and sets it down on the table. “Sorry for not cleaning up. I’m sure you can understand.”

  She struts to the balcony door and gives herself a hug. “You always wanted to fly. Maybe if you believe strongly enough, we will. Clap, clap. Everyone clap. Don’t let Tink die.”

  Charlene then steps up onto a chair and sits on the balcony railing.

  “Everyone clap. Don’t let Tink die.” She waves. Leans back. Her legs fly up and vanish. There is only clear blue sky.

  Officer McInerney turns off the TV.

  Every part of me is shaking. I answer their questions, explaining that I didn’t know she felt like this, that we were supposed to be roommates but we’d grown apart since she moved in with that man, and that I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary—except everything. After getting the answers to their questions, the two officers simply leave.

  I feel drained of feeling, as if I’m the one who’s dead and the officers came to tell me they’d found my body. I stare at the spot on the table where the portable TV showed Charlene talking.

  Charlene, what did you do? Jonathan, what happened? What am I doing here at all?

  “Stop.” Too much, too fast. Time to slow it down, girl.

  “My old room,” I say, forcing myself to think of something else. Right. Let’s see what mom left of me here.

  I get to the door of my room and only touch it.

  “Whatever you did, Mom, it’s fine.”

  Wrapping my hand around the doorknob, I twist and push open the door.

  Nothing looks the same. My bed is there, along with my dresser, my nightstand, and my lamp, but it’s not the way I left it. New yellow paint covers the walls, which have been cleared of all my posters and photos. A strip of floral print runs around the tops of the walls at the ceiling. There are new white sheets and a summery cover. It’s bright, happy. I’d never been happy like that here. Not bright, shiny happy.

  My mother has painted over all my disappointments and hurts with bright colors. It’s what Mother wants to make-believe, like a spread from a homemaking magazine. I was the one who lived here, but there’s nothing left of me.

  For the best—can’t idolize disappointment. Get it gone and get on living. Unlike Charlene.

  “How could you do that, Charlene? Who were you? Really?”

  I open the drawer on my nightstand and start poking around in the crap my mother put there: two pens, a pad of clean white paper, a small bottle of aspirin, and a bag of toffee candies.

  I scoff. It’s a hotel room.

  At least she left the flowers I scribbled on the bottom of the drawer when I was nine.

  She’s refinished my dresser; it looks almost new, except for the deep gouges on the side I dug with a penknife rather than cutting myself. I run my finger along those dark indentations and then jerk my hand away.

  “Nope. Not something to remember.”

  I’m not like Charlene. Not anymore. Not at all.

  I open the top drawer: empty. The next: empty. The next: empty.

  Right: hotel-room clean. For houseguests.

  “Whatever, Mother.”

  The bottom drawer, though, is full.

  Sitting cross-legged in front of it, I run my hand along all my rolled-up posters. One by one, I pull each out, roll the rubber band off, unfurl it, and try to remember why I bought it. She sang what I couldn’t say. They understood. They showed me a different life—showed me what I could be. They lived in a sorrow I understood. They were who I thought I wanted to be—happy, admired, beautiful.

  “But they’re not really like that are they? Right, Charlene?”

  I let the last poster fall from my hand; it curls back up like the others. “Don’t like light, do you?”

  Lying at the bottom of the drawer is the letter I wrote to Jonathan right after he ended it. It’s still sealed. Undelivered. Unread. Running my fingers along the edges, I try to remember what, exactly, it says. It’s long—six pages.

  I toss it back in.

  I slam the drawer closed.

  I needed someone to trust; then he went right for his bed. Worse, I wanted him to. Now I can’t trust him or myself.

  I sprawl backward on the floor.

  �
��Stupid,” I say, kicking the dresser. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

  I kick the dresser again. I want to destroy something. I yank open the bottom drawer, pull out the letter to him, and start tearing it to shreds. I rip up all the posters. I’ll kill everything that was me. I’ll kill all my decisions, all my stupidities, all my empty thoughts, my dreams of magazines and bands and fashion, and everything I was and wanted to be. I stomp on the pile of shreds; I kick them into the air.

  Gathering an armful of the scraps, I march through the house, push open the back door, throw them onto the concrete porch, light an edge on fire, and then watch the flame spread. Soon everything is burning. I run back and scrape together the pieces left on the floor, and I feed the flames with them. I watch the column of smoke as it fades into the cold breeze, wiping out all that I was and all those dreams of what I could be like—what my life should be like.

  “See, Charlene,” I say, “I’m killing myself. But only the parts of me I can’t be anymore. Not all of me, Charlene. You never, ever had to do that. You’re weak, girl.

  “Who the hell were you?”

  Sitting on the cold concrete, I pull my knees up to my chest and hold them, watching the shrinking fire. I push the pile of ash and half-burnt paper together to revive the flames, making sure everything burns up completely.

  The posters, photos, and letters, frail and blackened ash now, rise and blow away.

  Then a thought jars me—I wanted to sleep with Jonathan last night. Some part of me wanted to. We’d only been talking, being friends, just having fun. Yet all the while, something had been prowling around inside of me, urging me, pushing me. I imagine it had his chameleon eyes—hazel, changing from blue to gray to green. They were eyes that made me feel not pretty, which I’d have hated, but completely wanted, for my thoughts and my opinions—everything. That was so thrilling, like walking along a precipice, teetering on the edge of everything I’d wanted—the world I’d seen in my posters. With a nudge, I’d have fallen in.

  He was the key. I wanted him—wanted that—so badly, years ago.

  Still wanting that after all this time disturbs the hell out of me. That’s the part I’m trying to kill right now.

  Last night I felt exactly the same as the first time I came over to the loft alone—the night we first kissed, when he refused to sleep with me. That was so impossible to understand. But I didn’t understand the loft either: two mattresses, a stereo, a card table, mismatched folding chairs, music gear, and all that emptiness, with his keyboard sitting in the center, as if it were the center of his life.

  It was. Still is. Always will be.

  That’s what I didn’t understand then. All I saw was the emptiness; the concrete, brick, and steel; and how it looked like a glossy two-page spread of everything I wanted in life at nineteen. I could touch it. I felt as if I’d lose myself in that place—in him. With him, back then, I was able to forgive myself for old lovers, mistakes, and bad decisions. So much disappointment and pain went away with him; he made real my desires shown in my cutout photos and posters.

  Then he yanked that away.

  What’s wrong with you, Jennifer? Didn’t he sing of moments when love tears lovers apart? When it’s irresistible and destructive? Why didn’t you see that wasn’t merely his art? It’s his truth.

  The phone rings, jerking me back to now.

  What bill did you forget to pay this time, Mom?

  The phone rings again.

  I pick it up out of old habit.

  “Hello?” I challenge.

  “Jennifer?” Jonathan asks.

  I should hang up.

  “I’m sorry,” he says.

  “So am I.”

  “I …” he says. “What happened—not what either of us needed. But did. Now—”

  “No,” I say, shaking my head. “Not … just no. I gotta have some time.”

  The front door opens, and I hear my mother’s high heels clacking across the floor toward me.

  “Mom’s home,” I say. “I’ll call. As soon as I can figure it out.” I hang up.

  “Oh, I thought you said you were going to be at Wendy’s,” my mother says.

  “Hi, Mom,” I say.

  “What is that?” my mother asks, pressing her finger on the sliding glass door looking out over the patio.

  “I’ll sweep it up.”

  “But what is it?”

  “Old things. Things I don’t want anymore.”

  “You smell like smoke.”

  “I’ll shower,” I say. “Do you have an extra towel?”

  “Of course. You know where they are.” She opens the refrigerator door and starts pushing things around, making rattling noises. “Are you staying for dinner?”

  “Hadn’t thought about it.”

  “Well, I do need to know. I had only planned on Jean and me. If you’re staying, I need to make something else.”

  “I’ll eat out.”

  “Okay,” she says, and then she starts pulling out a few sealed plastic bowls.

  “Can I stay here for a couple of nights?”

  “I thought—”

  “Things changed.”

  “Oh.” My mother purses her lips. “Sure. You know where your room is. But your father and I have gotten used to the quiet, so—”

  “Won’t even know I’m here,” I say, pulling out my cigarettes.

  “Your father and I quit smoking, so you have to do it outside.”

  I nod and walk to the door. I turn back to my mother. “Where’s Sarabeth?”

  “Around somewhere,” she says, pulling the top off a green bowl and sniffing inside.

  In the living room, I kneel to look underneath the couch and then under each of the chairs. I find Sarabeth curled up beside a heat register and pick up the fat, lazy thing as she mews softly. Petting and cradling her, I walk past my mother, busily pulling a spoon around the green bowl. I step outside and hold Sarabeth as she purrs. I nuzzle her.

  “You don’t want anything but love, do you?” I say. Feeling Sarabeth’s warmth, I watch the breeze sweep the remaining ashes away.

  Chapter 53

  The Smooth, Cold Floor

  —Scott—

  I pull back a corner of the kitchen curtains in the apartment where Lynda’s staying. A dull-gray morning awaits outside.

  That “Daydream and Try” rocks has complicated things. Doing “Fantasy in Black” because it’s the only single we have won’t fly anymore. That makes selling it to get Kenny on as a guest singer a hell of a lot harder. And without his singing on a new Mercurial Visions single, his replacing Jonathan on the album looks all but impossible now.

  It’s not how I worked things out for us, Kenny. But—persistence and determination.

  Jonathan was finished. It was an easy out for him and an easy in for Kenny. Then Jonathan goes and kills it with “Daydream and Try.” Now he claims he’ll churn out stuff like he used to.

  But Jonathan’s pulled crap like this on me one too many times. And I won’t get fooled again. His games exhaust me, leaving me wondering when he’ll turn into the mopey prima donna who can’t function because of yet another woman.

  Plus we’ve only heard one good song, pulled out of his ass at the last second. That’s not an album. Sure as hell’s not what I’ve already seen for the future. That’s you, Kenny: our future. I promise.

  I’ve given up waiting for you, Jonathan. Sammy couldn’t wait for me. Kenny won’t have to. He’ll sing “Fantasy in Black” in front of Mercurial Visions, right beside me. It’s simply a matter of working out the details. Starting this afternoon.

  I’m meeting Nancy at Mad Bar. I’m sure she’ll understand that a single song from Jonathan doesn’t cut it. Neither does talk. We need real songs, actually written. She likes Kenny. She’ll be on our side. Plus she needs the band to work so she can live
legit, long term. However she gets her money can’t be legal. The band’s a cover. That much I’ve figured out.

  The whistle on the teapot starts crying, and I turn off the flame and then pour two cups of hot water.

  “Scott,” Lynda calls to me from the bedroom.

  I slide a tea bag into each cup.

  “Scott?” she calls again.

  “Yes,” I say, dunking the bag until her tea is “the color of early dusk.” Ridiculous comparison. About as ridiculous as me being here. I’m gonna have to tell Jonathan sooner or later.

  I wrap the string of her bag around the handle.

  “I’m out of cigarettes.”

  “And?” I ask, placing her cup on a saucer and walking it into the bedroom.

  She’s leaning off the bed, revealing her back and hips, rummaging through the pockets of her jacket.

  “I’m out of …”

  “So you said.” I hand her a cup as she sits up and brushes red curls of hair from her face.

  “Could you go get me some?” She gives me her I-might-let-you-have-me-if … look.

  “Your nasty habit.”

  She scowls and pulls the sheet over herself.

  No more skin for Scott. He’s been a bad boy.

  I leave for my tea.

  “What time is it, honey-bunny?” she asks after me.

  “Clock’s right there. On the nightstand,” I say.

  “I’m hungry,” she says. “We’ve got time for brunch before I go to Charlie’s.”

  I lean against the door frame, the paint cool on my skin.

  “Can’t take long though,” I say. “We have to be in the studio in a few days. I have a call this a.m. Meeting later.”

  “We can get my smoky treats on the way,” she says, letting the sheet fall away, revealing her body again. She curls her finger at me, beckoning.