I had just torn off its legs when I pushed the toothpick through its soft neck above the hard armor of its belly, its legs were writhing, dark bile dripped from it’s cursing mouth and its wings were stretching wide and clicking loudly against its hard skin.
“You know they say that’s how Dahmer got started” Her thin briery voice scraped through the air. I knew it was her before I turned and looked, I felt cold and my heart beat a little faster feeling as though it was missing every third or forth pump.
“Yeah? Well I started on ants over twenty years ago and if grasshoppers are as far as I’ve come I’d imagine you’ve got a few years before you’ll end up in my freezer.” I still hadn’t looked at her, her bristly laughter made my neck tense up.
I’m sitting in the backyard of a good friend’s house, the lot is long and narrow. Half has a neatly cared for thick green turf of damp rubbery lawn, the back half is freshly plowed dirt. I’m sitting on the edge of the grass with my feet in an irrigation ditch that divides the landscapes. What was once a small fire to serve as a gathering point on this chilled autumn night was becoming a bon fire increasing with my friends growing drunkenness, it’s now consuming old furniture and cardboard boxes.
She is standing right behind me, the old feelings are trying to stir. She touched a cold glass bottle of beer to my neck and when I took it I felt the blade of her fingernail once again, I turned to look. She was backlit by the fire, her short blonde hair illuminated by the flickering light, she is a fake. Her beauty, her wit, her clothes all fake, she has entirely invented herself. We met here in Santa Fe and our lives pathetically intertwined for a long while.
“You always made me laugh” she hissed. She sat down next to me on the damp lawn and tipped her head onto my shoulder. I don’t want to talk to her, I don’t want to kiss her but if she were to say “take me back to my place and we’ll have a good go at it and I promise not to say another word tonight” I would race her to my car. But no she says…
“You look good Caleb, how are you doing?”
“I’m a little drunk, probably dangerous.”
“You’re harmless Caleb, you’re a sweetheart.”
“Not dangerous for you, dangerous to myself.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, you’re looking pretty damn good tonight and…” a smile stretches itself over her bleached chalky teeth. “… I haven’t found you remotely attractive since…”
“Stop it Caleb, why do you have to go there, It was a mistake just one big fucking mistake and you had to rearrange our entire lives, I’ve said I’m sorry a thousand times.”
“Oh I rearranged our lives? What are you doing here? Who called you? Jose?”
“Yeah, Jose.”
“Figures, so why did you come?”
“To see you, can we go somewhere?”
“No.”
“Caleb if we could just start talking again…”
“Natalie is here.”
“Fine, are you picking Dylan up tomorrow?” She stands up and brushes the grass and dirt off of her ass.
“Yeah, it’ll be about six.”
“Caleb, I’ll be home all night”
“Don’t wait up.”
I tossed the impaled grasshopper to the ground and watched as it managed to crawl out of my sight with the toothpick still lodged inside it, resiliency, I wish I had half that much. I throw my beer out in to the garden and pull a flask of gin from my boot and take a long series of short sips, it warms me, I hadn’t noticed how cold I had become. I light a cigarette, take a long slow drag and collapse backwards revealing a star filled blue night sky. Civilizations actually looked up at those jumbled clusters and decided there was sense to be made of the randomness, religions and societies were based on that shit. Governments spend who knows what amount of money looking for something out there. What is there to find? Maybe another screwed up planet with more crooked politicians and fucked up individuals? Have you ever thought that Martian that crashed over in Roswell was just skipping town evading child support? Maybe, right?
My ass is pretty soggy from the grass and the cold has reached my bone. I struggle for a moment with standing up, that gin had done more than warm me. When I get to the fire Natalie is talking with my friend Brielle and her husband David.
“Your nose is so red” Natalie exclaims while grabbing my face “Your freezing, where have you been?”
“Out by the garden”
“So I saw Tracey leaving a minute ago” Brielle hints.
“Tracey was here?” “Why didn’t you say something?” Natalie begs.
“ I didn’t see her, she was probably here with Jose.” I lie.
“Oh yeah, I did tell Jose… I’m sure he called her.” Brielle looks at me knowingly. Natalie casually drifts back into conversation. Natalie is a sweet girl, the kind of girl that worries about me catching colds and not eating enough.
“Hey Nat, I’m getting a little tired and I’m just gonna walk home or get a cab or something.”
“Oh, okay let me go grab my purse.”
“No, no, you stay it’s fine. I’m just gonna head to my place and hit the sack”
“Are you sure? I can drive this is just cider.”
“Yeah I’m sure I could use a walk anyway, sober up a bit”
“Okay babe, I’ll call you in the morning, do you want to go to the cabin this weekend?”
“Yeah, that’ll be fun, we’ve got Dylan this weekend.”
“Oh right, ok, I’ll uninvite Jake and Delores.”
“Probably a good idea”
As I was walking past the front porch of Brielle’s house I overheard a girl on a cell phone.
“It’s always been my dream to manage an African American Brit rock band, or at least be a favored groupie.” Her comment amused and confounded me, I needed to know a few things. Where was this girl’s father, what her name is and even when in context how this made any sense, I had to know. She noticed my puzzled look and laughed, she ended her conversation abruptly as I approached her.
“I’m sorry, I overheard your conversation and I just feel overwhelmingly compelled to ask you to come and watch my band play tomorrow night, were called the Black Knack.” She laughed and my knees buckled, I hardly caught myself.
“I’m Caleb.”
“Hi Caleb, I’m Holly.” Her voice was yielding and cottony it effortlessly tumbled over her lips.
I glanced down at a little diamond ring on her wedding ring finger, she caught the glance and quickly tore the ring off.
“I’m a waitress… that’s why I had that on, I’m not married or anything.”
“That helps?”
“Well, not really. It doesn’t hurt though, there aren’t a lot guys you would call catches at IHOP during swing shift, maybe it deters a few”
“So why’d you take it off? I’d hate to disappoint you but I don’t know if I’m much of a catch?”
“I’ll be the judge of that after I’ve heard this band of yours.”
“I have confession, I’m just a replacement, they make me play my sax off stage… they say I don’t fit the image they are going for.”
“Oh, well can you introduce me to the drummer?”
“Well, I would but he’s a married man and I just wouldn’t feel right.”
“And the singer?”
“Yeah… married.”
“And the sax player?”
“Divorced.”
“Ah, me too.”
Holly is short, she has dark curly hair and there is nothing about her body that demands attention, but her eyes are present. She is looking at me and only looking at me, she is so involved in every moment that the person she will be in an instant is always a complete stranger. I am in love with her and I am going to make her a housewife, an effect she surely has on most men.
I reached into a cooler on the front porch and produced what looked like a Budweiser but the label had soaked off in the ice water, I held it out to Holly.
“Not much of a beer drinker” She says. I pull my flask out of my boot and offer it.
“How about gin?”
“Well, look at Mr. Preparedness” She says as she unscrews the lid on the tarnished flask.
“What can I say, I was a boy scout.”
“Is that right? What level?”
“Uhh, black belt?”
“Wow impressive”
We talked for hours, I hid as Natalie walked from the backyard to her car.
“I don’t live far from here, and there is more of that gin there.” Pathetic, I know.
“Oh… it’s gonna be harder than that sax man.”
“Yeah, how hard? I don’t have a lot of fight left in me”
“Come get a cup of coffee down at IHOP on Cerillos tomorrow around three, leave a good tip”
“Oh, hard to get, I see”
“Come, you won’t be sorry.”
The streetlights had already turned off as I walked down the street I live on. Some Mexican kids were still playing soccer in the street in the head lights of a white Lincoln Town Car with green spoke rims, otherwise the only light was the rise and fall of the ember on my cigarette. I walked past my apartment a few blocks down to the train tracks. My flask of gin was nearly empty when I reached the tracks, I tipped my head way back to drink the last few drops of gin and fell on my ass next to the track. I noticed a displaced rail spike lying beside the track. A perfect tool shaped by decades of rail cars molding its top to the same precise arch of the track smooth and shiny, a long broad rusted shaft perfect to wedge itself in the grain of a rail tie. But somehow this rail spike had repudiated its duty and worked its way out of its slot to lie dormant and defiant along side its calling. I wondered who the man was who swung the steel that drove the spike home into the tie. Was he a peasant from a fishing family that lived on the muddy banks of Shanghai? Perhaps a boy from Philadelphia. Maybe an ancestor of mine from the wet streets of Dublin. I sat on the rail near the spikes vacant slot, I saw the light and heard distant wails of an approaching engine. I held the rail spike in my hands as the train’s whistle screamed its warning. I dropped the spike into its abandoned slot, it fell into its place so easily that I could not feel a seam between the spike and rail. The bellows of the approaching locomotive neared, still I sat on the track drunk. My evening had been comprised of three conversations with three women, one that I had loved, one that I do love, and one that I am certain I will love. The iron track began to shake violently, the reconciled rail spike is rustling and jumping trying again to escape and leave its fate in the hands of something besides the iron track. It dislodged itself enough that I could grip it to pull it back out. I stood up and stepped off of the track I felt the hot breath of the beast as it roared past. It’s horns blare was entirely deafening and I could not hear what the engineer screamed at me as he passed. I threw the spike up and into one of the passing rail cars sending it to its destination of inutilely. I thought about doing the same but I think I’d rather have a cup of coffee at three o’clock tomorrow.
