Read Snapshots of Modern Love Online
Authors: Jose Rodriguez
Her life is upside down. The way she sees it, she has two choices. Run with her cat and the few clothes she has bought in the last few days, or stay and live her life where and how she wants to. The first option is the less stressful in the short run. Debbie finds the idea of starting anew again not very palatable and as a matter of principle, unacceptable. But staying put, God, that is not easy either.
She has to toughen up, she sees no other choice. Enough of running, of cowering and crawling for the next exit. Debbie lives like a gunslinger, with her revolver by her side day and night, loaded and at the ready. She takes her showers with it inside a sandwich bag so it is next to her. She sits on the toilet with it in her lap and goes to bed with it under her pillow, her hand next to it. She bought anew box of shells with more powerful hollow point bullets; the new ammo is now loaded, and she cleans her revolver every day with an Teflon coated rag. She now has a clip holster for it and she wears it at her waist. Her life depends on her preparedness. Funny, she thinks, after all that time she had spent with drug dealers and other assorted scum, she had come to learn by osmosis how to live under the gun, a skill she once thought she would never have a use for.
There is price to pay though. The stress of sleeping with one eye closed and one open, of driving while checking every car behind to make sure Billy is not following her, of walking with her back towards the wall and her eyes scanning every shadow, her ears listening for the slightest of sounds that may warn her of approaching danger, of living like a paid assassin with a contract on her head, that stress tires her and robs her of any peace.
A detective called her, asked her a few questions about Billy, told her they are looking for him. If caught he’ s going back for parole violation plus a few new charges such as assaulting her at the bar. If they can prove he trashed her place, they will nail him for that too. Be careful and watch your back, had said the detective before he hung up. A very pleasant voice, Debbie had thought, but the message had been clear, she needed to watch her back.
She parks her car between Maria and Ana’ s. She takes a good look around before getting out and stars walking towards the catering business employee door. The revolver weighs on her waist, clipped to the inside of her pants. She wears a too long and loose shirt to hide the revolver’ s bulge and its grip. She hopes that nobody at work will notice it. If they do, tough tities. She doesn’ t want to get fired, but she doesn’ t want to be without her gun. Many times a day she wonders if it is worth staying, if it is worth living like this. Next thing she will be wearing body armor, and a back up piece wrapped around her ankle, and she is a convicted felon without a carry permit.
“ Debbie!” a voice calls from behind, an unknown voice. She turns around fast and her hand is behind her back and under her shirt, touching the revolver’ s grip. A middle age man is approaching. She doesn’ t recognize him but he’ s smiling; still, she doesn’ t let her guard down and her hand is on her piece.
“ Debbie?” the man says, asks, and he looks at her with what she thinks are weird eyes.
“ Yes?” says Debbie, squinting to see if there is a ruse behind this encounter. Her eyes dart to the side, she looks over her shoulder. Anybody ready to jump her from the sides, from behind?
The man is now standing in front of her with a stupid look on his face but still smiling. Debbie’ s hand has pulled the revolver half way out of its holster.
“ Debbie, it’ s me, Ken.”
Debbie doesn’ t recognize him, doesn’ t remember the name, not under the stressful circumstances she is living. In a better day, perhaps she would have made the connection.
“ Ken, from Daytona Beach ... and Atlanta... and Dallas ... the fly boy.” He smiles like a dupe, a hopeful one, as if he were looking at what cannot be real. In Debbie’ s head memories flood and whirl inside; she feels dizzy but then gains her composure although her legs feel like rubber. Her revolver goes back into the holster.
The way Billy sees it, he can get away with it not because the cops don' t know who did it, but because they can' t prove a thing. He has been through the system enough times to understand how it clicks, or it doesn' t. He doesn’ t doubt that everybody knows he trashed Debbie' s place but he is also sure he left no clues behind to tie him to the deed. Fucking cops can' t touch him. He jumped parole, that' s true, but once he' s out of the state, even if caught, Colorado doesn' t have the money to pay for his extradition so they will let him walk. A small fish like him is not worth the time and the money involved. Nothing is ever set in stone, as the cliche says, but Billy is convinced the odds are that he will never set foot in Colorado again, at least not in handcuffs.
Debbie, that stupid cunt, Billy thinks while smoking in bed, he needs to let her have it.
The place stinks of urine on the sheets and rotten wood under the bed but none of it bothers him. The parting shot has to be a good one because after Debbie is dealt with he will hit the highway and won' t stop until he’ s well on the other side of the state line. There won' t be a second chance to fix a botched job. A gloomy end of day light filters through the dusty windows. The traffic noise from Colfax Avenue comes in strong but doesn' t bother him either. It is like being in his cell in Canon City, in perfect mental isolation despite the crowded halls and corridors and their rackets. Here or there, Billy thinks, what difference does it make?
Here I' m free
, but free to do what?
His mind goes back to Debbie. Divorcing his ass like that, what the hell was she thinking? Getting the divorce papers in jail via a messenger, and having his jail buddies laughing at him, about how his old lady must be screwing the whole neighborhood by now, giving head for free to anybody who dropped his pants in front of her face, that had pissed him off a great deal. He had ended in a fist fight and in solitary confinement. When he came out, nobody was laughing at his face, but he knew they were at his back. For better or for worse, those had been the preacher' s words at their alcohol propelled wedding but the little bitch had bailed out on him. Now it is payback time.
Billy chain smokes. Knife. Gun. Bare knuckles. Acid. Hit and run. Rape. Steel toe boots. One thing is for sure, he wants to hurt her but doesn' t want to kill her. Murder makes the unwieldy apparatus of justice shift its ponderous weight against the perpetrator but a good beating, even though it is a felony, at the end it' s just that, a good beating, quickly forgotten by an overloaded judicial system. He will be a person of interest, he even may become a suspect, but if he leaves no evidence and removes himself from sight for a prudent time, the cops can go fuck themselves. The stupid cunt will have to live with her mangled body and her anger and he will be laughing off somewhere.
As those signs on trail heads read,
Leave no trace
. Gun, rape, knife, bare knuckles, too messy, too lethal, DNA left behind; they won' t work. After a while Billy runs out of cigarettes so he gets up and leaves without bothering to luck the door. He returns hours later smelling of alcohol and with a baseball bat in his hand. He drops it on the floor next to his bed. From his jacket he pulls out a ski mask and drops it next to the bat. He takes his jacket and gloves off, drop son bed face down and in a couple of minutes his snores and farts fill his hiding hole.
Debbie packs cold sandwiches wrapped in cellophane into card board boxes. Her movements are automated, her body doing one thing and her mind being elsewhere: Ken, out of all people, had to show up in the middle of her crisis. She had almost pulled the gun on him. Only after he had identified himself she had seen the young Ken of years ago, hiding under the middle aged, hair receding, love handle equipped man standing in from of her. He had that look of stunned surprise, as if he had seen a long lost dog come home when it had been given for dead. She was sure she had had that same look on her face.
There had been awkwardness and confusion in her head, in her actions, a feeling akin to stepping out of her motel room and instead of landing on the expected soiled concrete breezeway, finding herself standing at the peak of Mount Everest looking at a world of snow and mountains under a deep blue sky. She didn' t know what to say or what to do. Ken didn' t seem too assured of himself either. He, Debbie had the feeling, was standing at his own unexpected summit, his toes hanging in the air past the solid edge of a shear cliff with his back to a cold mountain.
He had taken the plunge and had stepped forward, closer to her, and his arms had reached for her, and she had backed off like a released coiled spring, more out of instinct than out of her volition, and that step backward had frozen him in place, the smile on his face transformed in pure disappointment. Why had she done that? She can' t say. This Billy thing is making her behave like a scared rabbit, a rabbit with a gun. From their stand off positions they had talked to each other.
"Ken, is that you?" she had asked. "I can' t believe it."
"Yes, it' s me," had been his answer. Seconds that stretched like long minutes had gone by before the conversation had started again.
"How did you find me?"
"You catered an evening party and I was a guest. Pure coincidence."
The awkwardness wouldn' t go away. The silences grew longer. The whirling thoughts could not be reigned upon. It was time for a truce, a time to regroup and come back with more coherent words.
"Listen," said Debbie. "I' m late for work." She rummaged through her purse and on a piece of paper wrote down the name
Night Owl
and its address; she stopped to think for a second, then added the bar' s phone number. She didn' t give her cell number to anybody, not even to Ken, or this guy who claimed to be Ken.
"Here is my night job place. Please stop by." Debbie was not sure for what, not at the moment. Now that she is stuffing boxes with cold sandwiches, she is glad that she gave Ken that piece of paper.
"Tonight?" said Ken.
"Sure."
That had been it. She ran back into the building and never looked back. She was afraid of stopping, looking back and then having her rubber legs collapse under her, exposing her emotional shocked state. She had learn not to show her weakness to others because that is where they pounce, eager to draw the most blood and pain.
As the morning grows old Debbie' s memories assault her mind. She doesn' t know if to smile or to be afraid. Questions pile inside her head like fish on a dock coming out of a big trawler, heap after heap, and no answers. Whys and hows and whats come and go and she has no clue what the answers are. At times she thinks that the parking lot meeting didn’ t' happen, that her head is playing tricks on her. He may not show up at the Night Owl, or he may loose that piece of paper, or he may die on his way to see her. Stupid thoughts she thinks, but they don' t go away; instead, they multiply.
She realizes that she had acted cold towards Ken, and that he had been taken aback by her standoffish stance but she had been caught unawares, and had reacted under the rule of the gun which now controlled her life: watch your back first, worry about others' feelings later. She knew it but he didn' t. Maybe he thought he got the cold shoulder and would never bother to try to see her again. If so, what the hell does she care? But she cares; she cannot fool herself. She cares, she wants to see him, wants his arms around her, just like in the beach, just like in their cheap motel rooms full of youth and indolence.
Who is she fooling? She was a whore, and this older Ken came back for more of the same, pussy for hire, came to see if she is still available for a few bucks. She slams sandwiches into the boxes. He probably has a fat wife at home and wants some side action.
Too much trouble, thinks Debbie; Ken is going through too much trouble to just get laid. Colfax is full of young pussy for hire, why her? Maybe he' s afraid of cops, of getting nabbed as a john. She doesn' t know. At times she slams sandwiches into the boxes and other times she has a blissful smile as if she were seeing the image of the Virgin Mary reflected on the walls, smiling back at her.
"Yo, Debbie," says Maria. She is standing next to Ana and both look at Debbie with curious faces.
"You don' t seem to be all there," says Maria tapping her head. "You' re too quiet. You' re giving us the creeps, you know."
"Sorry, I just ... I just have a few worries."
She is back in reality mode. She checks her surroundings, feels the gun under her shirt, its hardness, and reminds herself not to let her guard down. Ken or no Ken, she has to watch her back, always.
What was I expecting to happen? Fireworks? Fiddles playing on the background? A big wet kiss and my fucking lousy life fixed for good and for ever? All I did was scare the hell out of her, moving on her like a big and clumsy clod expecting a warm embrace and she jumping away as if I were Frankenstein reincarnated. Instead of walking away happy I did it embarrassed to death. I don' t know what I was thinking. After twenty years I' m nothing but a stranger, a fleshed memory, a memory that perhaps she wants to forget, that of a paying customer, that of a witness to the Atlanta incident, that of the jerk who left her standing alone on a Dallas sidewalk.
I look at the piece of paper she gave me, with its round and childish calligraphy. I drove by the place, just out of curiosity, and what a dump it is. One of those dives that cater to the local alcoholics and unemployed, to the spent and rat race dropouts. Well, what the hell had I expected? A damned yuppie bar in a fancy location with a parking lot full of Lexuses? That' s Debbie, a street creature, as gritty as dry coarse sand paper, and she feels at home among her people.
The day I left her standing on Dallas, I didn' t leave her because of her past, because of her capability to pull a trigger and empty a gun in a scum bag who was trying to kill me. I ran away from her addictions. A junkie is two people, the one you love and the one who tries to destroy both you and the person you love. It' s a deadly love triangle where the addicted persona has the upper hand. The only way out is to kill the addicted persona, and the one you love may not have the will to do it, and if she tries, it may cost her her life. I' m sorry, but that' s not living. I’ m too much of a coward and that day in Dallas I ran out on her. Regrets? I don’ t know; perhaps it was the right thing to do, but the what if question has never ceased bothering me.
That was over twenty years ago. Debbie is still alive and is holding two jobs that I know of. A junkie cannot last that long, cannot hold a job. Holding two, even if one is serving drunks at a dive, is beyond a junkie' s capability. She has to be clean, or maybe she has reached a compromise with her addicted side and somehow both manage to survive in the same body. That wouldn' t beyond Debbie because I have to admit, she is tough and she isn' t dumb.
I don' t know why I worry. She is not my problem and it is obvious that she doesn' t see me as anything other than a dolt who came out of nowhere to startle her. I drive my truck in circles. I stop at the gas station' s Taco Bell and sit on a booth until my butt feels the pain of supporting my fat head. The paper she gave me is getting dogeared. I ran my fingers over it as if I could feel her skin under my fingertips by doing so. I smell the paper and it smells like paper. Surprise. Still, I want to catch the smell of her hair, that smell mixed with salt and wind.
I' m a dupe. I' m not a kid anymore but here I' m, acting like a pussy whipped teenager, chasing after memories that no longer held up against reality, that never did. She is probably laughing at me now, or wondering how she can get rid of me. I think that I should head back home, but I don' t have a home. I have a house with a woman in it who is the mother of my son, but that is not home. If this thing is a joke, may as well see it to the end and maybe I can make sense of the punch line. I suspect the joke is going to be on me, but I don' t care.
She did gave me the paper, so maybe she does want to see me again, perhaps more out of curiosity than anything. Knowing Debbie, she would have told me to go to hell on the spot if she really didn’ t want to see my mug again. The more I think about these things, the more confused I get. I' m going back to the Springs to take care of my business. I will come back later tonight to stop by the Night Owl. Or maybe not. I truly don' t know what the fuck I' m doing.