After lunch the women pick up their things, clean up and load the van. Debbie drives through streets flanked by professionally landscaped grassy areas, all so perfect and yet so cold, as if there were not human beings to soil things and to litter the clean sidewalks, strips of bright clean concrete that look as if nobody ever walked on them. Ana and Maria talk to each other in Spanish and the radio plays a Mexican radio station. The gibberish doesn’ t bother Debbie because it gives her a excuse to keep to her thoughts.
Ana and Maria will go home to houses full of children and husbands. She has two spoiled cats waiting for her. When she gets sick nobody comes knocking on her door to see how she is doing. If death comes for her in her little place only the stench of decay will tell the landlord that she is no more.
But that is the price to pay to be free, free of love and commitments and passions that yield bitterness and disappointments. Free of assholes like Nicky and Billy. Even Lucy and Ricky Ricardo got divorced in real life. Nothing ever lasts; there is no such thing as perfect love. Love is nothing but a memory, like the most powerful and destructive of thunderstorms the day after when puddles and mud are the only witnesses to its passage. She had plenty of bad weather in her past, and only dried mud sticks to her memory, stuff that when examined closely, it crumbles into dust.
The things she remembers, that still hold a shine and a freshness that doesn’ t die with time are few, and she treasures them even if she doesn’ t quite understand why those memories keep their youth. She stands in the beach, looking at that frothy seam where sea and sand meet. The seam goes far down, as far as the horizon, and Ken walks next to her. Such a silly memory. Or the time they were in the jetties, naked under a pool of sea water, or having dinner, a cheeseburger, onion rings and a beer, at that little place in Port Orange. Every thing had been, and still is, so silly, so unreal. She feels ashamed of the memories at the same time she relishes them. She sees Ken as a creature of her imagination, not as a flesh and bone man, but the memories of him making love to her are too real; he had to be real. Making love? He was a john, a paying customer; still, she had made love to him even if he didn’ t know it at the time.
“ Debbie? Hello?” says Ana, smiling.
“ What?” says Debbie, startled.
“ Wake up girl. You were in dreamland.”
“ Oh, sorry.”
Debbie’ s memories recede like a wave, and like a wave, they will come back again. She cannot stop them.
Tough People
Somebody, I don’ t know who and where, or where I read it, once wrote that men lead lives of quite desperation. That quote has drilled deep into my head for the simple fact that it is true. Perhaps it has taken a deeper meaning as my waist has grown around me and the hair on my head has started to thin and the ones on my back have increased. It’ s my middle age crisis. There are two antidotes for this malady: divorce the wife and marry a younger broad, or buy a sports car or a motorcycle. I got the Harley but the disease has not abated; instead, I got one more payment book. Anyway, a fancy Harley is way cheaper than a young broad and a divorce.
There is a dullness, an apathy in the things I do, in my relationship with Helen, my wife. A trip to Victoria ’ s Secret won’ t kindle my interest. It’ s something that goes deeper, a tiredness that suffocates me and presses on me like a dark and gloomy day when it feels like you can reach up and touch the bottom of the dark clouds.
It is not her fault, but I don’ t think it is mine either. I, we, have walked in this path for so long to end up at the edge of a desert that offers no comfort, and we stay where we are because there is nothing worth going for anywhere else. We are stranded.
Helen and I sleep in the same bed out of habit but not out of a desire to share our lives. We try to be civil to each other and for the most part succeed at it but now and then the dryness of our relationship rubs hard and we cross words, bitter words spoken softly that hurt more than screams and flung dishes.
I have thought about calling it quits, and I’ m sure that she has had the same thought many a time. Our son, Dorman, calls from college up in Boulder when he’ s broke and when he is going to come home to visit but I’ m sure he can feel the stress between Helen and I, like cold water running unseen under the ice crust of a frozen river. So Dorman stays in Boulder as much as he can, and I don’ t blame him. Who needs this shit?
My Harley rumbles like a machine from hell as I go through the tunnels on Highway 6, riding up the canyon towards Central City. I’ m a speck against the walls of stone on each side of the road where curled up trees hang to life on rocky ledgers defying gravity and the impossible elements. You gotta be tough to make it; you gotta be relentless on your desire to survive. I like riding into old mining towns, walking through their abandoned cemeteries because the misery and hard times of the folks underground make me look like a whiner, me, fat and rich and expecting to live past sixty five, and bitching about nothing. I lay my hands on miners’ tombstones as if expecting to draw their hardness into myself, as if the will to keep on going could come from an old stone and the bones underneath.
I never ride with Helen; she won’ t get on my bike for anything. She hates the damned thing. So I go riding alone and she goes shopping or visits one of her many relatives living around the Front Range. To tell you the truth, I don’ t care what the hell she does. Sometimes I ride with my buddies and those are good times because I get to share small talk with other human beings, and that keeps me grounded. Solitude is a double edged sword; it can do you good but it can also make you insane. It is hard to tell which edge I have against my throat.
The Night Owl Presents Pink Floyd
Debbie smokes behind the counter, inhaling hard and holding the smoke as long as she can. It’ s her fourth smoke and she has to make it last; she has to get as much nicotine as she can out of each precious drag. The jukebox is playing Pink Floyd’ sThe Great Gig in the Sky.A weird song for a jukebox, thinks Debbie. The female singer’ s voice raises and the vocal chords tickle Debbie’ s spine. The song may be an old one but that powerful voice is timeless. Debbie tries to guess who dropped the quarter for that song. Randy? He was an old hippie. Carl? probably not, he is more of a dead head.
The jukebox stops for a few seconds and a new song starts: Pink Floyd’ s Money.What the hell? Debbie shakes her head and smiles to herself. Somebody is going back in a time machine fueled by alcohol and music. The song goes strong and heads start to bob up and down with the beat. Some of them don’ t even know they are doing it. The old guy by the corner is either high as a kite or he’ s digging into the music, or he’ s both. Debbie would bet money he is the one responsible for the jukebox’ s unusual repertoire.
Charlie shakes his empty glass in front of his face and smiles at Debbie. She fills it up with foamy tap beer.
“ Want some pretzels hon? Here, on the house, ” says Debbie. She places a paper basket full of the salty fare in front of Charlie.
“ Thank you sweety, ” says Charlie. Debbie takes a couple of bills from the pile of small bills and loose coins in front of him, goes to the cash register and makes change. She puts the change back on Charlie’ s pile and he doesn’ t bother to check it. He never does. Nobody does at the Night Owl. They come to drink and to ogle at Debbie, not to worry about her getting them short changed, and if she did, so what? They will leave mostly all the change as her tip at the end of the night anyway. A small price to pay for some pleasant female company and for watching her pretty smile.