Punk and Zen

by JD Glass

  “You were living your life, Nina, on your path. Do you really think you’d be here, now?” and she looked around us, waving a hand to take it all in.

  Yeah, right. I wasn’t buying it.

  “That’s bullshit, Candace,” I countered. “Fran…Samantha—”

  Candace nearly jumped across the table. This time she grabbed my wrist—not painfully, but firmly. She leaned in to me closely, her eyes barely five inches from mine.

  “Died, Nina. Samantha died when she thought you were gone. Do you understand that? Have you seen the scars on her wrist? Felt them? There’s a reason we call her Ann. There’s a reason I didn’t tell her what I was doing. Think, Nina,” Candace shot vehemently, “would I risk her for anyone? What if you weren’t who she would have wanted you to be? What if you weren’t what she thought? Or what she needed? There’d be no one to save her this time.”

  I was shaken, shaken by the strength of her words and the memory of those scars under my fingertips. I’d known, but then again, I hadn’t, not really, not so concretely. I narrowed my gaze at Candace, considering. There was more to what she was saying, because her words implied something deeper, and I spoke it as I thought it. “You love her—”

  “That’s neither here nor there.” Candace waved impatiently. “I had to know if bringing you back into her life was worth the possible price that she, not you, would pay.”

  Now that? It really pissed me off.

  “So…you had to, what, fuck with me a few times to see if I was worthy or not?” I pulled my wrist away from her, pushed my chair back, and stood up. “So worried about her, right? So worried, so concerned,” I sneered, “that—what was it you said? Oh yeah, it was—”

  I stopped myself. That was going too far. I wasn’t going to do it, I refused to do that—I wasn’t going to become an asshole like everyone else. But boy, did I want to. Tonight, I decided, discretion was the better part of valor. I was going to leave this alone before I said something I truly regretted.

  I plucked my cigarettes from the table with one hand and grabbed my gig bag with the other, then slung my guitar over my shoulder.

  “Drinks are on me, as always,” I said coldly, politely.

  “Nina—wait, that’s not—” Candace began, but I ignored her.

  “I hope you got the answer you were looking for. You certainly did your research thoroughly. Please tell the gentleman who shows up I had to leave.” I gave her a little half bow and walked away. What the fuck, she probably knew ABC him, too. Wonder if she’d slept with him too, I thought, but then, that wasn’t worthy of me, and frankly? It wasn’t any of my business, either. I didn’t care.

  I found the waiter on my way out and told him Candace was with the band so that she wouldn’t have any hassle with a check. Hey, I wasn’t a total asshole. When I went out into the main lobby, I didn’t go to the elevator. Instead I went down to the other end of the corridor where rumor and the layout map said there was an outdoor pool. Both were right.

  A row of chairs circled the pool, with two tables holding neatly folded towels at either end. I found myself a lounge chair and propped my guitar on one, pulled out my cigs and threw myself on another. I was angry, absolutely fuming, disgusted with myself. I’d almost reacted like my father, verbally vicious in anger. I was sorry I’d left before finding out what Graham had wanted to discuss, but I’d apologize when I saw him next. Right now, I really didn’t trust myself, my feelings, or my words.

  Dammit. I lit a cigarette and watched the smoke float up into a star-filled sky. I’d never seen such a clear sky in anything but winter; it was as clear as a windless January night, when it’s so cold and crisp you can hear your breath crack—only here it was about eighty degrees out. I wished I’d brought the sangria with me, but then, no, I didn’t. I wanted to be completely clearheaded. I chuckled at the smoke as it floated above me. Here I was, a thousand and more miles away from home, and I was angry with my father, of all people, angry because he had told that stupid, stupid lie, just to be vicious—angry because I wasn’t any different.

  I tipped my ashes into a nearby ashtray and looked out over the pool. Nice. It was a good sixty or so feet long, vaguely lozenge-shaped. Diving board at one end, and, according to the dark numbers set into the white tiles, it went from five feet to twelve. Most of the light came from the building behind me, the rest from the sky. I wondered if the water was warm and carefully kicked off my boots—a new pair I’d gotten in England. What the hell. I took my socks off, then walked over to the table and grabbed a towel. I sat down again, just staring at the water, and untied the red tie that was still around my waist.

  Fuck it.

  I slid my pants off and folded them neatly, took the jacket off, and peeled off my top, then put the jacket back on. I grabbed the towel and walked around the pool to the diving board, just looking at it, thinking of nothing except that it had been a long time since I’d been in the water. I hung the jacket on an entry stair railing next to the board, put the towel on the ground, and climbed up a couple of steps to the diving board. I walked to the end and hung my toes off the edge. A good racing start. I shrugged my shoulders a little, loosening them up, and hung them past my toes, letting my back stretch out.

  Finally comfortable, I set myself into a starting crouch, my eyes focused on a patch of water that shone several feet in front of me, and sprang, through the air, into the water.

  I’d forgotten that I normally would immerse myself before I dove in, and the water was an electric shock against my skin. It was warm, blood warm, and I let myself glide under for a while, using the lightest of kicks to propel me. Finally, it was time for air and I ABC went up. Everywhere my skin broke the surface, I chilled as I pulled my way through the water to the other side. I could see just enough to make out the wall before me, and I pulled myself up in time into a flip turn, again enjoying the dark, silent world I glided in before it was time to breathe again.

  This time when I came up, I flipped onto my back, put my hands behind my head, and just stared at the sky, kicking lightly every now and again to maintain my position.

  I could understand Candace looking out for her Ann—that made sense to me. The rest didn’t, though, not really.

  I kept thinking about it. She’d said at the time that she and her girlfriend were “on-again/off-again,” and Fran had said they’d had “an arrangement.” So what did that mean? That they slept with other people? Or they got to test-drive the other’s new model first?

  I had to look deeper into this. I flipped over again and swam a few strokes, enjoying the feel of the water gliding over my back.

  There was one thing, I mused, that was hard to fake with another woman in bed, and that was just how ready or not the body was. I felt a laugh rise in my throat and surfaced quickly so I wouldn’t drown.

  Pussy don’t lie. Mouths do, hearts do, even the eyes, but the pussy wants what it wants and nothing else. Either you are that something, you get that something, or ain’t nobody getting nothing, I thought.

  What was it my first girlfriend had said? Oh yeah, solving the mysteries of the universe, especially the ones about sex. Maybe that’s where all the solutions were, too. This time, I really did laugh.

  God, I hadn’t had any in weeks. I didn’t even have time or the privacy to take care of myself, as if that would have helped. Pussy knows what it wants—and I knew exactly who mine wanted.

  Shit, man, I had to get out of the pool; my brain was starting to get waterlogged. It was time to get out before, well, I don’t know—maybe I’d stay there all night and float. No, not an option, not really, anyway, not with a trip and a show the next day.

  I swam back to the diving board and the ladder next to it and did something I love to do when I climb out of a pool—just grab on to the bars and pull myself up, kick and jump over the wall. It’s like flying for a moment. As I got to the top, ready for the kick, it hit me, hard. Samantha had tried to kill herself. For me. Over me.

  Candace had asked if I�
��d seen those scars. Of course I had; they crisscrossed my mind when I closed my eyes. I and my fingers could still feel them—their sharpness, the angles, the ankh burned over them. Christ. Those angry lines on her wrist spelled my name.

  I didn’t complete the jump. I let go and sank down hard. I gulped before the water closed over my head and let my knees bend when my feet touched the bottom.

  I exhaled and forced myself down until I was sitting and the world was black and warm, the only sound the water itself, heavy and moving me slightly as the filters worked. Even they were quiet.

  I closed my eyes and the darkness was complete, not even the slightest bit of shine from above as I fought lightly against the pull of the filter to remain on the bottom and wondered. Wondered what it was like to be dead, dead and still. I’d almost died once; at least, I thought I had. That had been like swimming too, like dreaming.

  What would have happened if I’d stayed in the dream? Did everything just go black? Did you know it? Would you care? Did a black wave crawl up on you, licking at your edges until it wiped you out and you exploded into space, or heaven, or something? Maybe you just lay there, forever, unknowing, unfeeling, the world going on and on and on like some giant fucking hungry machine, eating us up and spitting us out, and dead was dead like the meat on my plate or the dirt on the ground and everything still eating and feeding and dying forever and nothing ever came of nothing because it all became dirt until the universe itself blew apart into the great silence…

  Better to end it now, right? End it because nothing, nothing would ever change; everything born to die and die again and again and again, the endless grind mowing it all down, the grass and the trees and the people I knew and everyone…dying as they breathed, dying as I looked at them, I was dying at that second and had been since the day I was born.

  It was all one huge waste of time—because it would all be nothing but hydrogen and protons one day, a day we would never see because we’d have been so long gone that perhaps our atoms would have worn out, half-lifed into nothing.

  If life was survival, then it made sense that the ruthless succeeded. If there was nothing but the ever-waiting darkness, then someone doing whatever they needed to do to ensure their continued survival was right—not necessarily ethical, but right according to the law of eat or be eaten.

  You could take power—and even then, for what? Still the same black song waited to sing over you for the nanoseconds of cosmic time you bought.

  End it now and stop fighting a useless, foregone, and lost battle. It would be easy. All I had to do was exhale and inhale, as simple as breathing, and then? I wouldn’t anymore.

  It was almost a song in my head, a clear whisper in my ear. Do it—didn’t I want to know what it was all about, anyway? Samantha had tried—and would have succeeded had someone not saved her life, according to Candace. Was I any less than Samantha had been? We would all die anyway—did it matter? There was no such thing as eternal light. That was the eternal lie, because one day, even the stars would burn out; the light they shed was the evidence of their dying.

  My eyes snapped open in the dark. I’d reached that point underwater where you think you’ve been breathing, but you’re not, you’re definitely not, and I was seeing my nightmares close around me—those giant shadow hounds that had started to haunt me. Only this time, instead of searching, they were circling.

  Those words that had just passed through my brain didn’t sound right. I mean, okay, they did in a very logical way, but the argument didn’t sound like me, didn’t feel like me. The half-life of protons was a theory, like every other theory out there.

  I remembered a little factoid a physics professor had left on the bulletin board for anyone that was interested—a photocopy of a New York Times Science Section article. It wasn’t just a theory, it had been proven.

  “Photons, subatomic particles that are the ‘building blocks’ of light, travel at various speeds. Once they reach a critical number, they do the unthinkable: they gain mass.” The article had gone on to say that not all of them did it, and no one knew why, but it was the ultimate marriage of the macro (space) and the micro (quantum). Energy to matter. Matter to energy. Neither can be created nor destroyed—but apparently they gave rise to one another.

  Even in a vacuum full of nothing but waste and dust, even if the universe went cold and still, my photons would travel on until some of them gained enough speed to become something, or they would shine forever in the darkness.

  Fuck the whole eternal-darkness thing. Of course everything “ate” everything, at least in my head—I was starving! Fuck, no, I didn’t want to die, and twice fuck no in a pool. I’d been a fuckin’ competitor, dammit; there was no way I was going to drown some like some negligent parent’s accident.

  My legs had started to cramp, and I straightened them with a vicious kick that sent me surging to the top. I gasped as I broke through and decided to swim to the shallow side and walk around instead of going back to the ladder. I’d been an idiot. You weren’t supposed to swim alone anyway. I needed a good meal. Funny how weird your mind gets when your blood sugar is low.

  I walked in water not quite shoulder-high when I got to the end, and I dipped my head quickly one last time, to sweep my hair back and off my face. Water streamed down my spine.

  I stepped out of the pool and walked around the edge to the other end.

  I hadn’t noticed anyone else come out to the yard, but they waited at the other end, holding the towel out for me. I recognized Graham as I strode toward him, naked and wholly myself under the starlight.

  “You’re right,” he said with a glance at my chest that had absolutely nothing lascivious in it, just a pure appreciation that I didn’t mind. He firmly raised his eyes to the sky as he handed me the towel.

  “Right about what?” I asked as I took it from him. I dried myself off quickly, then wrapped it around my waist and took the jacket he held in his other hand.

  “Look, I’m a Brit. We don’t have the obsession you Americans do with mammary glands, but it really would be a shame to cover a chest like that. You have to have those shoulders to carry it!” he chortled, not removing his gaze from heaven until I was covered.

  His comment was respectful and I appreciated that.

  “You can look now,” I said dryly.

  Still he stared up at the sky while I went back to my lounger and picked up my clothes. I put the tie around my bare neck where it flowed down my chest, nestling between my breasts, a bloodred stripe across my pale skin. I rebuttoned the jacket correctly, then slipped my boots on. The jacket hung about two, maybe three inches below whatever it needed to. Hey, I was dressed, at least. My ass was covered—it looked like I was wearing a suit dress or something like that, anyway. I put whatever was left into my gig bag, grabbed my butts, and hefted my guitar.

  “Graham, I’m ready, it’s totally okay,” I assured him as I walked over.

  Finally, he looked at me. “Holy Jesus Christ—stop!” he gasped.

  “What?” I stopped, confused and vaguely alarmed. Was I about to step on a snake? Was there a spider hanging from an ear? I wasn’t familiar with the local fauna, after all.

  Graham walked up to me, stopping about five feet away.

  “I have never, ever, seen that jacket look so good!” he said. I’d never seen Graham looked so amazed.

  “Graham, you’ve been drinking, haven’t you?” I asked him, taking a step forward.

  “Hell no, girl!” he expounded as light flared from the doorway that led back to the hotel corridor. Guess someone else was coming out for a swim. “You look fucking hot, fucking sharp—”

  “Like a Razor?” Candace’s voice drawled out into the hot night air.

  I snapped my head at the sound to see her backlit by the door. Her eyes flashed a moment in the light before it swung shut behind her.

  “She told me you’d be out here,” Graham said. Dammit. Was there anything Candace didn’t know?

  “I’m sorry I didn
’t wait for you, ABC Graham,” I apologized to him.

  “It’s all right—sometimes, things come up.” He grinned. “Do you want me to get you out of this,” and he jerked his chin over at Candace, who walked toward us, “or shall we try again tomorrow?”

  Tempting as it was to take Graham up on his offer, the fact was that I might never get a chance to face Candace again—and there were things I still wanted to know.

  “Good luck and good night, then. I’ll see you in the morning?” Graham asked.

  “Of course.” I smiled back. “There’s only one boat a day!”

  “And don’t you forget it!” Graham reminded me, shaking a finger at me with mock severity.

  He nodded politely at Candace as he walked past her, and this time, I found another table instead of opting for a lounger.

  A thought occurred to me. “Hey, Graham?” I called as he reached the door.

  “Yes?”

  “Could you ask someone to send some food out here? I’m starving.”

  “Consider it done, then,” he said. “Can’t have you wasting away.”

  Candace came over to the outdoor table I’d chosen as I once more put my guitar down. “Can we try this discussion again?” she asked me with a small smile, her eyes gleaming in the starlight as I straightened. She reached out and gently grabbed my tie. I let her.

  “You’re easy to fall in love with, Nina, but you’re hard to love,” Candace said quietly.

  Whatever angry thing I was going to say in response died in my throat when I saw the sad twist to her lips and the tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry, Candace, but I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. I gently took her hand from my tie and the skin that lay beneath it.

  “Sit with me. Let’s try this again. Do you want a cigarette?” I offered.

  She sat, she took one of my cigarettes, and I lit it for her. Light flared again from the door, and we both looked when we heard a voice.