Snapshots of Modern Love (11 page)

Women at Work

The catering van speeds through I-25 southbound for DTC. Debbie drives and Ana sits in the passenger seat. Maria sits on the back, on the floor among coolers and boxes full of warm food. They reach their destination in front of a glass and marble building, a fortress of commerce, a business bastion among the other towers that house the engines that propel the new economy. They have done this gig before and like a well trained squad they deploy their boxes and tables and trade utensils fast and efficiently. With few words among themselves they have everything set up right before lunch hour.

A small group of men and women in casual office attires comes into the room and queue for their chance at free food. Debbie knows that there is no such thing as free lunch. Somehow the powers above will extract that lunch from these people, plus a little bit more. There is going to be a return for this investment. She smiles like a good hostess and slices cuts of beef and plops them on plates loaded with side trimmings. This is better than serving the slop in the jail’ s cafeteria, and she doesn’ t have to use a hair net either.

Debbie serves young women who have manicured hands and a college degree. At their ages she was walking the streets to snare a john, looking to score dope, living from day to day, from minute to minute. She serves beef with a polite tenderness. Debbie knows she is a survivor of sorts, still standing on her one leg and her prosthesis, flashing a smile of artificial teeth, but she is not bitter. She holds no grudge against these young women who came from good families and had their college and their first car paid for by loving parents. She had nobody, but hey, that’ s life; you do what you can with what you got. She made it this far, not in one piece, but made it this far and the future ... well, no point to worry about it.

But she does worry about it now and then, like when she went to Ana’ s sister wedding. Debbie felt lost among the wall to wall crowd of relatives that made Ana’ s family, and there was a bunch missing that couldn’ t make the trip from Chihuahua. Sitting at the table, surrounded by noise and people linked by blood and marriages, she felt like a ship wreck at sea floating on a coconut sack in the middle of the ocean. She didn’ t know were she was drifting to, and it didn’ t matter because whatever the direction the currents might carry her, there was nothing but emptiness.

After two failed marriage she had no intentions of boarding that boat again. The first one had been to Nicky, good hearted but dumb as a rock and lazy. She got tired of working two jobs seven days a week while he slept on the couch all day long complaining about his back, a back that didn’ t hurt when it was time to go fishing or drinking. Marriage to her had seemed like an opportunity to share things but Nicky had been interested only in taking, taking her money, her time, her life, never giving anything back in return.

The second one had been to Billy. Debbie still cannot figure out how she ended up with such a loser. Sometimes she blames her eagerness to find a companion overriding her common sense. At other times she blames her innate ability at picking up losers despite their defects being as visible as the sun in a cloudless day. Billy the biker, the macho man, the wife beater, the ecstasy and meth dealer, the philanderer, the one that got caught cooking meth and distributing drugs and was still sitting in jail, where Debbie thinks he belongs. It had been a miracle that she hadn’ t been dragged into his mess. The cops had come around their shabby apartment with a search warrant asking questions, probing, looking for a way to send her away with her husband; after all, she already had a good size rap sheet.

They could prove nothing because there was nothing to prove. She had always made sure that none of Billy’ s crap was stashed in the house and her vigilance had paid off. The cops went away empty handed. The close call had scared her to death and she had filed for divorce right after his conviction. For once the courts had been on her side and she got a quick divorce. Listing in the sworn affidavit the occasions in which Billy had struck her had also helped her motion.

Debbie finds it unbelievable that she had put up with his abuse. At the first beating from a boyfriend she had always packed her bags in a hurry and left destination unknown. But that was when she was young and had nothing but her body to trade with and her addictions. Back then packing and moving was a matter of putting her few clothes in a gym bag and getting her money stash from under the toilet’ s tank lid. Boyfriends were nothing but a blip on her journey to nowhere. A husband had proven to be a little harder to get rid of because of the emotional investments, all false pretenses, poured into the marriage.

Still, there was no excuse. It was true she had been afraid of his bad temper and his mean streak that would flare with just a little bit of priming from alcohol or for no reason at all. Fuck him and the Harley he rode in, Debbie says to herself when she thinks of Billy.

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’ s
The 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.

Two more Pink Floyd songs go by. Debbie believes that the old guy in the corner is going to have an orgasm. Glyn Preston enters the bar and smiles at Debbie right form the threshold. She reciprocates. Glyn walks to the jukebox and puts a few bills into in and starts pressing the keyboard. Debbie and all the regulars in the bar know what he is up to: blues. His broad back is stooped over the jukebox and its lights make his dark skin shine like a vinyl long play. His ivory teeth framed inside his everlasting smile glow with an electric blue hue as he presses the keys. The Pink Floyd guy is going to get kicked off his cloud when B.B. King starts belching
The Thrill is Gone
.Glyn is a blues aficionado, a rather dedicated one, and his personal collection holds many old and obscure records, but for a jukebox that plays Pink Floyd, Johnny Cash and Sinatra, B.B. King and Johnny Langare adequate.

Glyn sits at the bar and Debbie serves him his Scotch and soda without him having to ask for it. He will run a tab until closing time. After closing time him and Debbie may or may not got to a motel and have sex. They don’ t know for sure until they are in the parking lot and look at each other. There is no need to say a word. Some nights it feels like the right thing to do and others it doesn’ t.

The odd couple they are, mismatched in size, color, marital status, musical taste and everything else that could be of interest to a match maker but somehow their oddness is their link, knowing that their playful sexual romps cannot be become anything else. They enjoy each others company, have sex and small talk and leave each other in good spirits, without any debts standing, without issues to be solved later, without promises or guarantees.

Tonight they smile to each other in the parking lot and end up in the Lucky You motel. The pink neon lights adorning the edges of the balconies outside make their way into their room through the thin curtains and bathe their naked bodies. Debbie always has to get on top because Glyn is too big to do it the other way around. White on black glowing in pink and Debbie’ s stump ignored by both. After sex they talk for hours about nothing and go at it again. They never go to sleep together and always leave in separate ways when the sex is done with and there is nothing else to talk about.

Now and then Glyn gives her a trinket, some piece of gaudy gold jewelry that both know Debbie will never wear. She always hocks it and Glyn never bothers to ask where his gift went. It is a strange relationship, Debbie admits, but a harmless one. Glyn’ s wife must be used to him not being able to keep his big pecker in his pants, and Debbie is sure she is not his only side dish. Glyn’ s must be a truly bizarre marriage. But she loves his everlasting smile, good disposition and sincere willingness to listen to her; they make her life less gloomy, and that is worth a good fuck in return.