“I didn’t see that coming,” she said. “So I did indeed inhale the thing up. I do not even remember smelling any-shin...”
“That is their idea. Drug dealers want YOU to get high, without even noticing it,” said the detective in a pompous tone.
“As for them, they don’t really experiment none of that stuff.”
The detective felt completely at ease as he explained his day-to-day occurrences and activities that he was most used to get in his routine experiences.
“They never try it! They do not care about you. They care simply about them, and forget about your health as you pay with your life.”
“Here it goes. I didn’t see that coming neither. That is all that I was waiting for: a lecture in the middle of those people at the police department. Oh, that’s great!” Christie was becoming really impatient. To have that friendly cup of coffee that he had promised her seemed the only thing that kept her from collapsing her entire body on the ground and burying her whole being inside a hole.
“I just feel so stupid!”
She looked around. She looked in the mirror that stayed strong and firm on the wall after what seemed like a hurricane right in front of her. Her eyes were red and burning, and she ran with them, rolling them side by side to see if she could still move them. She quirked them quickly up and down and she made a complete circle around the orbits as fast as she could, the way that she desired that her whole body would move as well. At least that is what she should be doing right then.
“Run! And I could run as fast as I can without fainting. Can I really make it?”
But she still kept her head down, looking at the floor. There was a red-yellowish liquid all over it, running like blood. It was actually blood currently running with a current of thoughts and poisoned fluids eager to take over her whole body, as a distillate wine tickling frenetically through her veins in a dreadful pain.
“Puff!” She panted.
“What a mess of cultures in this building! I wonder if it is always like that in the police station: This multicultural festival of people. I bet it is always like that, since I live in a place, which is full of presence of people from different cultures, and different beliefs.”
That’s America, the land of cultural contrasts, diversities and opportunities.
“Where is the handsome that “saved” me?” Christie grasped. He was not there anymore. What a shame...
“Hey, where is my coffee?” She finally asked.
When they finally released her, she breathed completely relieved as she relived the entire night. The moon was already there watching her over the sky when she left the building.
It was just then that she remembered that she had left her cellular phone in her car. She put her hands on her head as she felt her brains were about to explode with the blood coming back to its circuits.
“Man! Where did I leave my car? Oh, boy... What a night!”
She walked encompassed in the streets of Philadelphia. She stopped at the supermarket to get some food. It was already close. Christie didn´t give up in her quest.
“The refrigerator must be empty.”
She headed home as fast as she could but not before grabbing a sandwich at seven-eleven nearby Jefferson Station in the Market Street. No sign of any police behind her back... She sighed. She could finally take a rest.
She arrived home. She looked for her key inside her purse. She heard some steps behind her. Someone just passed near her. She hurried up and grabbed the key to just let it fall back again.
“Oh, that´s so hard to find the door key when you most need it inside this black hole!” A “black hole” is how she called her purse.
She finally inserted the key in the hole and gently wiggled it.
The door lock was jammed and needed extra care. When she finally opened it she looked around before she entered to make sure no one was waiting behind her or had been following her. She took out her clothes and was going directly to the shower without even noticing that she had left her front door ajar. She was about to soak her whole body with soap when she remembered to go look at her voice mail panel first.
There was a red sign dancing like a fool on that white electronic apparel. That reminded of herself dancing her way out as the police officer grabbed her from behind and talked to her with that foul smell coming from his mouth. That gave her the chills.
“Oh, well...no messages...what the heck is Dawson, anyway? He disappeared! That son of a dawn....”
Beep!
“Hey, honey, where have you been? I was worried about you. You disappeared and I left the place before the cops...you know...that tragedy, and then...”
She quickly grabbed the telephone receiver.
“Where have I been?” She answered to that metal-icy voice on the other side of the line.
“You are so cynical! You left me there so do not come with excuses...”
“Hey, baby, so, you are home. Good Lord, what happened to you? You disappeared over the crowd...”
“No baby, YOU disappeared! I was looking’ for you, and you left the ground...you left me there all by myself!”
“Did you see what happened? I think the girl was a Latin bitch...and then, the cops arrived...”
“Yeah, the cops arrived, they handcuffed me and they almost took me in prison...you were the one who got me into that...I am so mad! I am so...”
She hung up the phone. She was too angry to complete the conversation. The carpet was totally wet. She had left a trail of blood mixed with soapy water behind her when she went to get the phone.
Just then that she noticed that she had been hurt. And that was not the work of the policeman.
Christie was too high then to even notice this.
One of the guys who were there at the ritual grabbed her while she was drugged and he took advantage of her trance and cut the inner side of her leg with a small knife as he tried to tear up her underwear. And she didn’t even remember that before.
She got another phone call. It was the handsome policeman. She was too tired to talk on the phone.
This time she let the machine get the message for her.
“Hello. This is Officer Smith. I would like to make an appointment with you, to check out more about the case report. Please give me a call at: 966 6894. Thank you.”
Beep!
Christie collapsed on her bed as soon as she got some sleeping pills. She spread the pills through her mouth.
“Need some beer though to get them down on my throat.” She stood up still groggy and went tottering to the refrigerator. It was just then that she had noticed that she had left her front door open. She reached the door with difficulty, almost crawling towards it, and she closed it with one turn of the key. She felt weak. She looked at her hand. There were bruised all over her wrist. It had been almost one hour after that incident and she could not still take that girl's face over thy/my (dyed-died) head.
“Ts-ts”, the woman said in disapproval of those children playing so freely in front of her, almost like an affront to her decency. Years gone and she couldn't take back. And she was evil enough to make a spell to those lovely care-free kids.
“Oh, how much I miss my childhood... Then when I would play with the other girls, and teach them about rhythms while I clasped my hands as fast as I could, and they could not follow me and it was so funny. “
Then she jumped with her head going up and down as she remembered her going between two ropes while the other girls bounced them like swirling snakes covering her whole body and enveloping her like waves in the ocean.
‘But then I was so much younger, and I had so many more dreams as I believed I had to follow my bliss... I was so naive. I didn’t care for the things of the adulthood...and why should I care anyway?
Even when that witch (bitch) woman told us when she saw those so free-from-stress girls playing:
“You play all you want now. Seize your childhood, before it is gone...because, baby, those years pass fast and soon they wi
ll be gone forever!” Since the day that I have paid attention to those words, I stopped playing.’
Her mind took her back to her American School that she had left with so many dreams and goals to accomplish. The school was founded by a Methodist Priest.
“And you know what they say about the Methodists, that they are methodical and like illustrative examples. After all, do you know how many Methodist it takes to change a light bulb?” she asked to herself. She was talking nonsensically in delirium.
“That's under-termed: Whether the light is clean, dim and deemed, or completely screwed, you ARE love, no matter how brewed! Let me drink first to swallow the rest of this stuff down on my throat.”
“Cheers!”
She heard a celestial bell; it was a sound out of this world, like an angel timber, that woke her up at exactly ten minutes after nine o’clock.
There she was in Philadelphia. Philos meaning love and Delphos gods. There where the gods meet love. The city of gods’ love and that´s what it means Philadelphia? She grabbed the phone.
“Mom, something terrible happened...”
“Oh, my! What did you do, Christina?”
“I didn’t do anything! Just that Dawn... son of a gun...”
“Oh, boy! What did he do this time? Oh, don’t tell me that you got married and you forgot to invite me...” she said, with a giggle and a nervous laughter.
“No, mom, I told you that I would never marry any man... My heart belongs to...”
“...me! Yeah, yeah! You told me that, Misses Murphy! Please, sugar, do not do anything wrong. You had just moved away from me. Did you find a job yet?”
“No, mom, but I am going to go to another interview today. Listen, I have to go now...”
“But what happened, Chris? Are you not going to tell me something? Nothing at all?”
“Oh, mom...I will tell you later...no big deal...”
“...no big deal? You were almost crying!”
“No, mom, that is okay. It was another fight that we were having...Dawson and I... I don’t know about him... I think that I will break up with him...”
“But again? How many times do I have to hear that? You will end up marrying this guy, oh, ho...I am sure of that!”
“Got to go, mom!” she interrupted her mother who was almost crying on the phone.
“Hey, mom, I really got to go... talk to you a later...”
Then she heard a sigh on the other side of the line... a deadline made them rush to get things straight as soon as possible.
She made another call. This time it was Art to whom she had been calling. He turned his eyes on the other line and thus did not pay much attention to her. He always did that anyway, even when they were face-to-face, he would never be looking directly to her, but to the other way around, never looking directly to her eyes and seeing her completion that in a way also disturbed him so very much. And he could not see as tears were coming falling from her eyes.
“I am so overwhelmed by that entire incident at that party...”
Christie thought that she was speaking to him, when in fact it was just her imagination, just through her conscience that she could hear herself talking.
“I better not tell him”, she said. “I need to spare him from this disgust; he already has so much going on in his life...after his father in prison who murdered his own wife. He was in an orphaned home, and now his grandparents who don’t give a shit for him...Oh, well, I better not tell him, no, no!”
She turned her face out to look around, afraid that someone would be watching her. It was a misty night and it didn’t seem that it would get much better than that. People looked gray; they all wore black coats and seemed to defeat the early winter approaching so quickly, the hush-hush of the whole situation and the rush wind without the fall defying its harshness.
“You look tired...”
“Who, me? Yeah, I am tired!”
“I better get going...You go get some rest.”
“Ok, I´d rather, for that´s better than getting someone arrested!” She said.
He pulled the chair for her. She touched his hand and stood up carefully.
“Have a good one!” He said as she let him take her hand up to kiss it in a casual yet theatrical way.
“Oh, I would die with his chivalry.” She said to herself. Her legs trembled just while thinking of his romantic way, and his gentleman mannerisms that almost often and completely drove her crazy, something so rare nowadays. And that he would make the most obvious in his soul.
“Oh, how I desire him. How I wish I could feel the least fragrance of his kiss in my lips, and feel the tenderness of his embrace. If he could just know... just know how much I desire him. I am going to kick Dawson out, and stay with him in his castle of love.” She completed her statement without even noticing that he looked at her right at that moment when she let it skip the word “love” out of her mind.
He smiled at her...
“You pretty bastard...”
“What?” He asked.
“Oh, I said, you look pretty... mastered so well on your outfit, Art...”
And then she just touched his Calvin Klein's jeans. And then again he seemed abstract to any touch that she could give to his skin. That’s what disarmed her most. The individual flame that she felt from him and the electrical current that surpassed their bodies when they were together and that he didn’t even notice that it existed between them.
“Art, how come you stole my heart, that I could never marry any other man, but you? If you could only know what is inside my heart.... But I am afraid.”
She was afraid that the revelation that she eagerly want to share with him would scare him to death and that she would never see him again. He would escape to the furthest lands of this world.
“And our love would be doomed forever. I’d rather suffer in silence, than to risk of losing his friendship.”
She knew about how fragile his anima was, and how tender was his soul. She knew that she was playing with fire and that he was just a fish swimming among sharks in murky water. The shapeless, that it seemed the serpent of the sea made it more complicated to touch it. The streams could easily loose the course.
And the vibration that started small can became of a bigger radiance. It could leave an avalanche of trembling lines that danced in the lakes but it never stopped.
“I do not want to wait in vain for your love...”
“You’ve got such a beautiful voice. You never thought about becoming a singer?”
“Me, a singer? Ha, Art! You hurt me. Please ... Enough that I already disturbed the girls of the choral that I made part. I am too loud!”
“But that is the thing. You were born to be a star, to make a single solo. Not to make your voice be confounded between so many tones. You just lose yourself when you think you are less than you are supposed to be, little girl!”
Oh. Little girl! Oh, yeah, that is who she was for him... just a little girl ready for a play.
“I don’t want to wait in vain for your love...”
Annie Lennox was still playing over and over in her head.
How tender was his smile. But he stopped smiling as soon as he saw that she smiled back at him, as if he was afraid of losing his pride. He pulled the chair for her again. And she fell right into the tip of the chair. He grabbed her before she fell on the floor. How not to fall for a man like him?
“Thanks, Art!” He pushed the chair back to the position where the seat sees under the table and thoroughly knows the table’s entire secret.
And the table doesn’t even need to say what’s going on.
“Hum-hum!” He responded, eventually, in a very casual manner.
“Don’t you see, stupid? That I am in love with you? How come you treat me like an acquaintance if I know you since I was nine?”
His black and shinny hair became a lightning blue against the pearled moon light. Oh, he looked even more charming with the rays of the silvery touching against his skin.
&n
bsp; His eyes had that mysterious look of someone who lived awhile awake and never conceived to live in the darkness. Did he have some sleep? His passion seemed to be an amalgam of love and the enormous heart he had.... Did he have a heart? Of course, he did! His heart was beating for the two of them, it was within her! Her Art...
“Excuse-me?”
“What?” she said.
“Did I hear it clearly? You said “my Art”?”
“Did I say it too loud that he heard it?” she asked to herself, doubting about the power of her passion that it was so loud like a thunder in a heavy cloud in a dark sky.
“No, I said, my heart...yeah, my heart! Oh, my heart is going to explode if I do not calm down, and relax.”
“Chris, let me call you a cab. You look tired. You must go take a nap now.”
“I will, I will.”
After that, he simply disappeared. She took a five-minute nap. During her sleep she heard a bell ringing again, with that same celestial timber that she had listened for the past few months, as if a thousand angels touched it, as if announcing the end of a dreadful time and the return of the dead to their places.
“For whom the bell tolls?”
“It tolls for you!”
She woke up, and looked at the watch: it was nine eleven again, at the same time that she had called her mother, only that her watch was suffering a jet lag; it was marking the time in the South hemisphere still. She put her ear over it. She heard no beat. There is no tic-tact.
That is more like brick-a-brace than a bric-a-brac; and it was simply not working anymore...
She felt as if something was trying to say that it was time to go to the police office and try to get this out of her neck once and for all. She takes courage and calls the detective who had already said that he would be working overnight.
“Need some information about the Juniper Street’s case.”
“Juniper? Oh, I’ve got it! That is the name of the street where the incident happened.”
“That´s exactly right!”
“See, I do not even know exactly where I was... Don´t bother...” O Brother Where Art Thou?
Mysterious Murder of Marilyn Monroe Page 12