Snapshots of Modern Love

by Jose Rodriguez

  She lights her fifth and last cigarette of the day. Tonight she is sticking to it. Ken notices that she never uses the hip bag wrapped around her slim waist. Cell phone, cigarettes, lighter, tissues, everything comes out of her purse under the shelf by the back wall. What does she have in that bag? It is loaded with something. The thought comes to his mind and a second later is gone. Other more important things fill his head, and the alcohol is not helping either.

  Glyn shows up and sits at the bar. Debbie already gave him a call early in the evening and told him about Ken; just enough so there are no embarrassing surprises for anybody. Glyn told her that it was about time she got herself a decent white man.

  "Hi Glyn," says Debbie and serves him the usual.

  "I came to see your boyfriend," says Glyn smiling from ear to ear.

  "He ain' t my boyfriend." Debbie' s cheeks turn red and Glyn notices.

  "He wants to be, and look at you!"

  "What?"

  "You' re blushing like a little school girl!" His laughter raises above the crowd noise. Debbie puts his drink in front of him and slaps his hand with a playful smile.

  "Shut up."

  "Where is prince charming?" murmurs Glyn. Debbie leans forward and says," At the end of the bar" and her eyes point to Ken' s end.

  "Umm," says Glyn after a dissimulated look. "No bad. Go for it girl." Debbie just shrugs and answers with anon-committal "whatever."

  Ken feels the alcohol loosening him up but not getting rid of his paralyzing doubts that don' t let him talk. Debbie and Ken now just look at each other and smile, but don' t know what else to say to each other. Over twenty years had gone by, and they have nothing to say to each other even if almost everyday of those long years they had thought of each other. Sometimes those memories had been nothing more than brief and unexpected shadows and other times had been long brooding sections of what if' s and what could had been but it never was. Despite their silence, their lack of verbal communication, they cannot stop looking at each other. Ken tries to be nonchalant but he cannot stop caressing her with his eyes. He' s afraid she is going to freak out; instead, she reciprocates his stares. Still, they cannot bring themselves to open up and talk. That' s not their way.

  Last call for alcohol. Glyn has been gone awhile. The waitresses, Dawn and Amanda, and Debbie encourage the last patrons to finish and leave. Ken stands. His stomach is knotted. So this is it. Over twenty years of expectations will come down to a it was nice to see you, maybe a cold handshake. He feels like ripping his shirt off and yelling I want you Debbie! so hard that his throat would explode. Why not? If he is going to make an ass of himself, may as well do it with flying colors. But he can' t, too afraid of rejection. The years have changed her, and of course, he has also changed. The whole thing had been such a foolish idea to start with. His logical thoughts fail to make a dent in his feelings for her. He remains standing but his body can neither move out or sit down.

  Debbie comes over and sees the fear in his eyes. That' s a feeling she can identify with it, a long time companion that comes and goes but never stays away for long. She leans forward across the bar counter top and wants to say something but doesn' t know what. She wants to reach over and touch his face, but she is afraid. She smiles instead, a soft smile that makes Ken lose his tense nerves. He slouches.

  "Hon," says Debbie. Ken raises his head and smiles. Her words sooth him.

  "It will take me a few minutes to clean up and close. Do you want to wait and walk me to my car?"

  Ken responded with a meek "sure."

  Debbie and the waitresses start to clean up. Ken snaps into action, gets on the floor and starts to help the waitresses put the chairs over the tables.

  "You don' t have to help, you know" says Debbie from behind the counter.

  "I' m tired of sitting on my ass," says Ken. "I' m not used to it."

  After cleaning the floor he gets behind the counter with Debbie and puts an apron on with a natural easiness that both startles and pleases him. He starts washing the dirty glasses. The physical labor invigorates him and starts to clear his head of alcohol and inaction. He feels cobwebs melting away. Sitting and brooding on his ass is not for him. He would rather be shoveling dirt than thinking about life. He shakes his head at the stupidity that has preceded him until now. Little by little he gets into the washing swing, memories of Al' s Dinner come to him, doing what he is doing now, washing dishes and listening to Johnny s stories and jokes. God, he misses the old man. Johnny would have given him a swift kick in the ass long time ago and had made him come to his senses a lot sooner.

  "Whatever happened to that old man that you worked for at that place in Port Orange?" asks Debbie, now standing next to him and drying the glasses that come out of Ken' s sink. Ken wonders if Debbie can read his mind.

  "His name was Johnny," says Ken.

  "I always thought of him as Popeye," says Debbie. Ken lets out a hearty laugh, a sincere one.

  "You know," he says between laughs. "I always thought that he did look like Popeye."

  He pauses washing glasses but his eyes remain looking at the sink.

  "I don' t know what happened to the guy. I came by a while later and the place was closed." He sighs. "Never could find out where he went or what had happened to him."

  "He was a nice guy," says Debbie.

  "Weird but nice," Ken agrees, going back to washing dishes."Remember the night he made us have dinner?"

  Debbie hesitates. She remembers like it had been yesterday, and it had been magic but cannot explain why.

  "Yes, I do," says Debbie in a soft voice. "Cheeseburger, onion rings and a beer."

  Ken stops and looks at her.

  "I can' t believe you remember."

  "Do you?"

  "Of course." Ken turns his face back to the sink. "like it happened yesterday." Ken is embarrassed to say those words, but they are true. They don' t speak afterwards. They just interchange glances and small smiles, but the dike of mistrust and forced politeness built during the previous hours now has a big crack in it. True feelings are already seeping through that crack. When the dike breaks, if it ever does, both Ken and Debbie wonder what is going to happen. Will they drown? Will they rise to the surface and be carried away to who knows where? It doesn' t matter, whatever happens it is meant to be.

  The clean up is done, lights out and the bar' s door are locked and the waitresses go home with their tired feet and their pockets full of small change. Debbie and Ken linger in the parking lot, next to Debbie' s car. The street light above them casts their shadows on the cold asphalt as they stand in front of each other at arm' s length. Their hearts beat strong and they look at each other with eager eyes. Still, words don' t come easily.

  "Debbie," says Ken. "I don' t know what to say. Well, I know what I want to say ... I just don' t know how ..."

  A figure jumps over the hood of Debbie' s car. A ski mask cover its face and it swings a baseball bat. The bat lands on the side of Ken' s head with a thud and Ken drops to the ground as if his legs had become boneless. Debbie screams and jumps back. The assailant starts to move toward her with the bat raised above his head. Debbie knows that Billy' s face is under the mask. She is still screaming when Billy falters in his advance. Ken is holding onto his ankle, a feeble hold, but enough to make Billy look down. Billy starts to wind up for another swing at Ken' s head. Before he can bring the bat down, Debbie uses the unexpected distraction to pull her revolver from her waist.

  The first shot hits Billy in the stomach and he flinches. The second shot quickly follows and it is higher, on his sternum, and Billy takes a step back. The third shot is slower to come because this time Debbie takes deliberate aim and cocks the revolver before pulling the trigger. Billy' s head jerks back when the bullet strikes his forehead. Billy falls on his back and the bat bounces on the parking lot with a hollow sound and rolls away from him and his convulsive departure from life.

  Hospital Dreams

  The coffee from the vending machine i
s bitter and it tastes like disinfectant. Probably is not the coffee but the smell of the hospital itself, a smell that gets into everything. The detective has left her alone finally after asking the same questions over and over and writing the answers in his pad. Not once had Debbie given a different answer to the same question. She had stuck to her story with consistency and assuredness. She had called 911 and in a few minutes the parking lot had sparkled with bright spot lights and flashing red and blue strobes. During those minutes she had to wait for help to arrive she had kneel next to Ken and had held his hand, squeezing it and praying that his skull was not cracked beyond repair, his brain damaged forever, saying to him “ hang in there” without knowing if he could hear her. She could see that Ken was breathing but could not tell how bad he had been hurt.

  Amanda had come running after the shooting and had stood next to Debbie, shaking her head in disbelief.

  “ Who is that?” she had asked Debbie while pointing to the masked body.

  “ That, ” Debbie had answered in a cold voice, “ was my ex.”

  Amanda had witnessed the attack and the shooting from behind the wheel of her car as she was getting ready to pull out of the parking lot and she had given her statement to the cops. Debbie had seen them interrogating her out of her earshot. At least hers and Amanda’ s stories should match and nobody should doubt her own statement. Score one for her, Debbie thinks.

  Billy’ s body lay face up, inert and heading for rigor mortis. Apool of black blood grew from the back of his head and his middle and Debbie could smell it but despite her aversion, she didn’ t leave Ken’ s side. The cops had come, had taken the hot revolver still gripped in her hand but had been quite polite. They had asked questions and she had answered them straight because she had nothing to hide. She had wanted them to pull the mask off the stiff so she could confirm it was Billy. They had said to wait until the crime lab showed up. When they finally pulled the mask off, the cops had looked at her and she had said, “ that’ s him alright.” Nobody at the scene had seemed surprised. Debbie recognized among the uniforms the female cop that had told her that Munch was dead.

  The paramedics had come and had plugged Ken with tubes and wires and had bandaged his head.

  “ How’ s he?” she had asked them.

  “ Stable ma’ am.”

  “ Can I go to the hospital with him?” Debbie had pleaded to the sergeant next to him and to her surprise the cop had helped her climb into the meat wagon.

  “ The investigators will talk to you in the E.R., ” he had said. The doors had shut and the ambulance had taken off with a roar of diesel engine and screaming sirens.

  All that now seemed a far away memory, a bad dream in another life. Debbie sips her coffee and waits for Ken to come out of surgery or X-rays or whatever they are doing to him.

  “ Are you his wife?” had asked a nurse with a clipboard.

  “ No. Just a friend.”

  “ Do you know a next of kin we can contact?”

  “ No. All I know is that he’ s married and lives in Colorado Springs.”

  The nurse had asked to confirm his last name and Debbie had to shrug her shoulders in ignorance. Funny, after all the shit they had gone through together, Debbie ponders, she doesn’ t know his last name, and she is sure he doesn’ t know hers either. She knows him and he knows her yet there are so many things they don’ t know about each other, essential things, basic stuff. They share things that cannot be explained to people with clipboards, things that cannot be measured or gaged but that are as solid and strong as steel to them but that would look like flimsy excuses for a friendship or love to strangers. Love, she thinks, that’ s a funny word.

  The numbness of overdue fatigue slows her down; she has been up since five o’ clock in the morning. She wonders what is going to happen when the investigators find out she is a convicted felon and had a gun in a bar. With her record, some assistant D.A. is going to throw the book at her. Well, she thinks, getting nailed for carrying a concealed weapon in a establishment that sells alcohol is far better than ending up in a body bag in a cold morgue, like Billy is right now. The shooting was clean. Debbie assures herself that the law cannot make a case against her; it would be hard to convince a jury that she was not right in fighting a crazy ex that came at her with a baseball bat and a masked faced.

  Still, there are butterflies in her stomach. She is a nobody with along record and unable to afford a lawyer; an assistant D.A. may want to charge her with something and then scare her into either taking a sorry deal or face a court room with an overworked, underpaid, inexperienced public defender by her side. Debbie knows that taking the deal would be a better choice, no matter how unfair. The system is not designed to work for people like her.

  At least the cops had not even handcuffed her so that was a good sign. The butterflies dance in her stomach but there is also relief in knowing that Billy won’ t be coming back to hurt anybody else. The image of the masked face in her sights as the hammer came down and then watching that head jerk back after the flash and thunder of the shot, keeps on repeating in her head, and she finds pleasure in it. He got what he deserved and she is satisfied with that thought. She didn’ t expressed it to the cops though. She made sure that the cops had heard only the bit about how she had feared for her life and Ken’ s, which was true anyway, but had kept the satisfaction of revenge to herself. It had not been a deliberated lie but just a careful truth.

  A pair of doors swing open and Ken is wheeled out through them pushed by a group of people in scrubs. He’ s wired and tubed and unconscious. Debbie stands up and follows the entourage to a room where Ken is parked and hooked to drips and monitors.

  “ How is he?” Debbie asks a tall and young doctor.

  “ His occipital has a small crack and his brain had swelled too much so we did surgery to relieve the pressure.” He smiles. “ He should come out of this with a good headache only. We don’ t see any brain damage.”

  “ Thanks doc.”

  The doctor smiles and in a swift second all the people who had been working on Ken are gone leaving her alone with him. Debbie wonders what she is supposed to do now. She flops herself on a chair next to Ken. Her haggard eyes look at his bandaged head. His breathing is soft and steady. He will probably be out of it at least until the anesthesia wears off. When he wakes up, then what? Will he look around with crossed eyes, see her and then ask, “ who are you?” Will he say, “ it’ s all your damned fault?”

  Debbie sees and hear cops talking to the doctor just outside the room but she is too tired to try to eavesdrop on their conversation. If they want to talk to her or haul her ass to the station, they know where to find her. There are curtain partitions on each side of her and Ken. Feet shuffle, people sob, the overhead speakers in the lobby call names, paramedics, nurses, doctors, orderlies and cops move through the halls, trying to patch a wounded city, trying to understand why these people are here. But they leave her and Ken alone. There is nothing else they can do for now.

  Who is this man next to her? This Ken Somethingouski. She remembers him telling her he was a Pole. What’ s next? She thinks that she should get up and leave, leave for good. This Ken doesn’ t deserve more of her and her troubles, and that is what she is, trouble. This is the second time she ends up shooting somebody to save him, but somehow she feels is all her fault that Ken gets in the middle of her messes. He would have never been in that parking lot if it hasn’ t been for her. And the Atlanta thing, it had been her who had brought the Hillbilly from Hell to meet Ken.

  Her eyes close and the sound of waves lapping on the sand comes to her. The surf swirls around her whole legs, both of them, and her toes sink into the sand to fight the undertow. Ken stands next to her watching airplanes fly overhead, towing banners that flap in the breeze. Their shoulders touch and there is happiness in that feeble touch, in that stupid accidental and meaningless rubbing of skins. She would never be able to explain the peace and satisfaction she feels to a person with a clipbo
ard. Maybe there is nothing to explain because there is nothing there; nobody can see it, can measure it. Yet, why can’ t she shake such memory off, why can she for sake such feeling?

  A few minutes later Debbie sleeps on the chair and her breathing pace matches Ken’ s.

  Family Awakening

  A hand squeezing her shoulder awakes Debbie from her sleep. She opens her eyes and has a difficult time focusing on the person standing in from of her. She rubs the sleep off her eyes and now she can see a rather plump woman looking down on her. She has a face like a bulldog and friendliness is nowhere on her features; rather, she stares at Debbie with a decisive hatefulness.

  "Who are you?" barks bulldog face.

  "Debbie. And who are you?"

  There are two more people behind the woman, all looking as if they had just gotten out of bed, which they probably did, guesses Debbie.

  "I' m Helen," says the woman and then points to Ken who is still asleep under the influence of sedatives. "I' m his wife."

  Debbie remains seated. Her missing leg itches even though there is no limb where the itching seems to be coming from. So this is what Ken is running from? Debbie tells herself. No wonder. Debbie knows that Ken' s marriage is none of her business and that dreams of beaches and happiness are just that, tenuous dreams that fall apart when touched by reality, like tissue paper trying to soak a water stream.

  With a sluggish effort Debbie gets up, using Ken' s bed to propher self on her one leg and one prosthesis.