Snapshots of Modern Love (18 page)

Headache

My bold head throbs. I say bold because the surgeons had left a hairless patch where they had operated so after I left the hospital I shaved the rest in the name of evenness. It wasn' t until now that I realized that my skull is shaped like a bullet. The doctor told me that my double vision would disappear as the days went by, and he was right. The headaches are not gone yet but they pound me with a diminished intensity each day, another correct prediction.

I woke up in a hospital room with the biggest whopper of a headache I ever have experienced. My eyes couldn' t focus and everything came in as double. There were two He lens, two James and two Freds – her brothers in law - when I came to, and zero Debbies. Not finding Debbie in the room had been a disappointment until the cops came to talk to me and told me that she had come in with the ambulance and had stayed by my side until Helen showed up.

An orderly told me about Helen' s going ballistic and getting on Debbie' s case. I don' t understand it. Helen has not moved a single finger to try to save our marriage and yet she goes bonkers about Debbie being next to me. A marriage is not saved by keeping people away but by spouses working their private problems out, starting in the bedroom, moving to the kitchen, to the rest of the house, and finally looking for things to fix outside the house. It is too late to try to keep me away from Debbie or anybody else.

I was still using the guest room in our house, soon to be Helen' s house, before I moved out. I went to talk to a lawyer and after wards I told Helen I wanted a divorce. I didn' t and I don' t expect to patch things up between us; as I said, it is too late. Helen response came as a bout of hysteria and her only solace was bad mouthing me and Debbie and everybody else on Earth. Of course, she sees herself blameless on this matter. Asking her for a divorce was likes wallowing a bitter horse pill to cure a disease; it didn' t go down easily and I almost choked, but I had to do it.

Getting whacked on the side of the head rattled my understanding of things. From this forced shakedown previous truths came tumbling down into the dust, among them my commitment to a failed marriage, my resignation to a crappy life, my shame at telling my son that his mother was no longer my wife. The doctors told me that a little more force behind the blow to my head could have shattered my occipital bone and driven the broken bone pieces into my brain. A second impact on the same area would have done the job too. I didn' t see my life flashing before my eyes, or lights above calling my name, or angels waving at me, or any other bullshit signs of my forthcoming demise. The truth is, I don' t remember a damned thing. I just woke up in a hospital with a terrible headache and seeing double.

Still, the close call made me realize that life is short, that it can be made quite shorter by many means, like a baseball bat, and that I' m not a young man who can get beaten and be up on his feet the next day, bruised but ready to go again. It takes me a lot longer to heal now. What is left of my life I need to make the most of it, before my mind is gone and my diapers are full of crap and I don' t remember who my son is, or before I fall off a horse and land head first on a rock.

It is not easy to drop years of marriage and a wife like if they were unwanted baggage. No matter how odious wife and marriage have become, there remain good memories that stick to you like your own skin and make shedding the old life a painful thing; it is like being skinned alive. The initial shock and pain are subduing and now I can see options in my future that I couldn' t before, but there is also a lingering pain that may never go away, a scar that will never heal.

Debbie shot dead my attacker. Jesus, it' s the second time she comes to the rescue. Now I figure that the hip bag she carried at the bar, the one she never opened and looked heavy, had a gun in it. I' m so fucking brilliant, a Polish Sherlock Holmes. Things are always obvious after the fact, when it doesn' t matter anymore. Anyway, I' m still breathing because of Debbie' s prowess with a firearm. Instead of John Wayne saving the girl, the girl saves John Wayne, again. The cops told me that all stories check out and that it was a good shooting. The bastard who hit me happened to be her ex, an ex con andal ready in parole violation and wanted by the law. Nobody is shedding tears for the bastard.

Since two days ago I live in a motel next to I-25. Helen had become vicious with her bile and her insults so I moved out. I should have left the same day that I told her that our life together was over because living under the same roof afterwards became a very bad idea. Had she used that internal fire to try to make things work instead of using it to debase me after the marriage was history, probably I wouldn' t be living out of a suitcase, with a shaved head, going to sleep with the sound of trucks on the highway and strangers banging their ho’ s in the rooms next to mine. But you know what? There is no point in thinking about the past when the present and the future are as shaky as a drunk Humpty Dumpty rocking on at all ledge.

I haven' t reached for Debbie since the day I got whacked, and she doesn' t seem to be looking for me either. I' m in the phone book, just like my business is so if she wanted to, she could have given me a ring. I have being taking care of my business since I left the hospital. Medical bills and Litigation are liable to get expensive, and I need to keep things going. These things don' t wait for you to get healthier or for you to get your shit together; they just come at you no matter if you are ready or not. With a baseball hat buried to my ears I get to supervise my crew. I don' t want the sun to burn my pale scalp. The guys tell me that I look like Dumbo. I had to take care of my rental properties too. Because of my work I have been running like a beheaded chicken and I haven' t had time to get in touch with Debbie.

I think about her all the time. At nights I cannot sleep thinking about what the future may be like, about us being together. At times I allow myself the luxury of fantasizing about our happy life together but each time the bubble bursts and I land with a flat thud on the hard surface of reality. That' s not how things work Bubba, I say to myself. That night at the bar, the hours before we ended up washing dishes together, they had been nothing but hell. I didn' t walk away because of my self pride, of being afraid to admit what a fool I had been for chasing after somebody who really is a stranger. Yet, those few minutes together, side by side with our bellies to the sink, they had been a nirvana that cannot be explained with words. Such a stupid thing, standing side by side washing dishes, I cannot believe that I' m getting a divorce because of it.

Despite my recurrent fantasies about Debbie and I being together, I haven' t had the balls to go back to Denver and look for her. I don' t have her phone number. All I know is where she works, just like I did before. I know I have to do it, that I cannot just leave her behind like I did over twenty years ago in Dallas. Just as I know that I must seek her, I' m afraid of her, of her looking at me and laughing at my naive illusions, middle age desires, at my bold head and fat and soft middle.

I fool myself with the idea that work keeps me busy, that I' m not ready to go after her but with every minute that ticks by, I know that I' m running out of excuses, and like the snow in Pikes Peak during spring time, I’ m also running out of time.

Anew

Debbie is back in her apartment. The place has no furniture but at least the fixtures are fixed. She sits on the floor with Ernie in her lap. His leg is out of the splinter and his limp is gone.

"For a while I thought you were going to end up like me," Debbie whispers to her cat. He purrs in agreement.

Besides her and the cat the only items in the apartment are Ernie' slitter box, his food and water bowls, a few cans of cat food, a biggym bag holding Debbie' s few new clothes and shoes, her toiletries, and a blanket and a pillow on the floor. She had thrown everything else away because it had been either destroyed by Billy or soiled by his mere touch. Now she is going to start from scratch again. Billy won' t have that chance so Debbie sees the fabled silver lining to her situation.

She leans her head against the wall and sighs. Past forty, former prostitute, one legged, no teeth, twice divorced, with no children, no husband, no relatives, no true friends, one cat, the clothes on her back, and a beaten up Geo with bald tires, and a murderer, all adds up to a picture perfect loser. The road to old age everyday looks more like a steep downhill into lonely senility, to a pauper’ s grave, or to ashes in a can with her name on it that is never to be claimed and that will be disposed of in the trash bin by a quiet an anonymous clerk.

But she will start anew because that is what it takes to keep on living, to stay in control of one' s life. Tread forward through the mud, uphill, with the heavy and clumsy baggage of a fucked up life on one' s back, but tread one must because falling flat on one' s ass means giving up life, and treading up the hill is always better because, who knows? maybe there is a pleasant sight at the hilltop, maybe the downhill side is not through mud but through strawberry fields. With her luck, Debbie thinks, the mud will turn into broken glass and a mine field and another Billy will be waiting at the bottom of the hill.

For days she has been expecting a knock on the door, the cops coming to arrest her for either shooting Billy or for having a concealed weapon, or for both, but nobody has knocked at her door yet. She is afraid of showing her face at the police station to ask about the disposition of her case; there is no reason to rattle the hornets' nest. At the Night Owl she has become a sort of celebrity, all regulars pleading with her to describe the gruesome details of the shootout.

"Did his head blow up, you know, like in the movies?"

"I heard you shot him in the balls, is that true? Man, that was mean."

At least when she announces the last call for alcohol nobody gives her too much lip and she and the waitresses have been able to close in time every night. Nobody wants to mess with a gun packing mama. She doesn' t have a gun anymore, but the reputation is enough, and Debby is fine with that.

She has talked to Glyn since the shooting.

"How you doin' girl?" asked Glyn.

"Fine but a little bit shaken."

"Good Lord, I would have shit my pants if that mother fucker had come at me like that."

"You wouldn' t, I know you. You first would have bashed his head in, and then you would have shit your pants."

Glyn' s hearty laugh had soothed her. It' s amazing, Debbie thinks, what little kindness it takes to make a shitty day not so shitty.

"That dude that was with you, how he doin' ?

"Ken? He got hit on the side of his head. At the hospital the doctors said he was pretty lucky he didn' t get killed."

"When is the wedding?"

"Why?" Debbie' s face turned sarcastic. "Do you want to be my bridesmaid? You would look good in a pink dress holding a bouquet."

"Sure, that way I can get in a room full of naked women and help them get dressed."

"Like nobody is gonna notice your fat boner trying to poke out from under your dress."

He exploded laughing. Thank God, or Glyn, for a good laugh.

Ken hasn' t called. Of course he can' t because he doesn' t have her cell number. He could have called her at the Night Owl. Even if he lost the paper she gave him, the damned place is listed in the phone book. Now, why would he be that stupid? He almost got killed for nothing, and his wife probably made a public ass out of both when he came out of the anesthesia. Between Billy and his wife he probably had enough of Debbie to last him to eternity.

She could call him, Debbie mulls, but she doesn' t have his phone number. His name must be in the police reports, and he' s probably listed in the book. Assuming she would call him, what the hell can she say to him? Sorry you had your head smashed in? Sorry I' m still a loser? Sorry your fat wife is such a bitch? As they say, if you ain' t got nothing nice to say, keep your mouth shut.

Despite her indurate thoughts, her pragmatic and level headed musings, she cannot get Ken off her mind. Granted, they had not clicked all night until he finally got off his ass and started helping, and the time by the sink washing dirty dishes, it had been so ... Debbie tries to find a word for it but nothing comes to mind because the definition is not in the mind but in the heart. She had felt young again, ready to give the world the big finger, willing to tell anybody to kiss her ass, unashamed of being who she was, and more importantly, she had felt that link to Ken, so special, strong and undeniable and yet so far beyond the reach of explanation and definition.

Maybe she should try to call him to see how he’ s doing, you know, just to be polite and show her concern. But then no, she doesn' t want to stir more trouble in his married life. Maybe he and his wife patched things up and a call from her would throw off the perilous balance that makes up marriage life. Who is she to get in the middle of another' s life anyway? Her intrusions are deadly, like the time she drove her car into the woman she killed.

She sighs again. That brief feeling at the sink, together, that had been a flawed desire to have what had past, what had never been and never will. Debbie closes her eyes and imagines sea breeze flowing through her hair, the surf whirling between and around her whole ankles. She opens her eyes and sees an empty apartment under septic electric lights that makes the bare white walls look like they are covered with watered down mustard.

A tear slides down her face. Ernie is looking at her with an amused face. It is time to go somewhere else, to see new things, to get away from Denver' s nasty winters. May as well, she will be traveling light, both in material possessions and the memories of those left behind. Billy is dead and she has proven her point, that she is not running away. She picks up her cell and dials Glyn' s number. She wipes the tear off her face while the phone rings.

"Glyn?" she asks. "Is this a good time to talk?"

Debbie lets out a great sigh.

"I' m just calling you to say good bye, and thanks for everything."